Title: A biologically inspired intelligent environment architecture for mobile robot navigation

Authors: Yongqiang Cheng; Ping Jiang; Yim Fun Hu

Addresses: School of Engineering, Design and Technology, University of Bradford, Bradford, UK. ' School of Informatics, University of Bradford, Bradford, UK. ' School of Engineering, Design and Technology, University of Bradford, Bradford, UK

Abstract: Localisation in conventional autonomous robot navigation using centralised on-board intelligence faces many challenging issues. Steering away from the centralised on-board solution, this paper proposes a distributed approach by deploying distributed wireless nodes that comprise of vision sensors and embedded computers to process images, localise the robot and dynamic obstacles, navigate and control the robot. This schema releases massive on-board information processing required by conventional autonomous robot to its operation environment. The objective is to enable robots with limited intelligence to carry out complex navigation functions. The architectural design and realisation for connecting wireless vision sensors in the environment for global robot navigation path planning and local motion control is described. The paper gives a review of the proposed algorithms. The details of the wireless sensor network connectivity, system functions and modules, organisation and connection of the system components are described. The hardware and software realisation and experiment results are also discussed.

Keywords: autonomous mobile robots; robot navigation; distributed wireless nodes; vision sensors; mosaic eye; intelligent environment; robot localisation; robot control; robot path planning; motion control; wireless sensor networks; WSNs; bio-inspired computing.

DOI: 10.1504/IJISTA.2012.046561

International Journal of Intelligent Systems Technologies and Applications, 2012 Vol.11 No.1/2, pp.138 - 156

Received: 07 Sep 2011
Accepted: 09 Feb 2012

Published online: 23 Apr 2012 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article