Title: Gap identification strategy for mobile robot navigation in static and dynamic environments

Authors: Dorra Ayedi; Maïssa Boujelben; Chokri Rekik

Addresses: Control and Energy Management Lab (CEM Lab), University of Sousse, Sousse Engineering School, BP 264, Sousse Erriadh 4023, Tunisia ' Control and Energy Management Lab (CEM Lab), Sfax Engineering School, University of Sfax, BP W, 3038 Sfax, Tunisia ' Control and Energy Management Lab (CEM Lab), Sfax Engineering School, University of Sfax, BP W, 3038 Sfax, Tunisia

Abstract: This paper presents a new strategy of mobile robot navigation inspired from Follow The Gap and Grouping Obstacles methods in static and dynamic environments. In this work, we have proposed a solution based on gap identification for the problem of obstacle avoidance. The mobile robot scans the surrounding through a laser sensor, then chooses the safest gap between the obstacles to reach the target. After that, the direction of the mobile robot is given by a fuzzy logic controller. This algorithm has shown its adaptability in cluttered environment and has produced good results comparing to the methods suggested in previous works. On the other hand, we have added a new fuzzy logic controller in the case of dynamic obstacles to command the linear velocity of the robot. This approach was tested in some simulations, and has shown its efficiency in generating shorter and optimal paths in a small time, which represents a great advantage.

Keywords: mobile robot; navigation; feature extraction; gap identification; willing gap; fuzzy controller; obstacle avoidance; obstacle model; gap model; control law.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMIC.2020.113296

International Journal of Modelling, Identification and Control, 2020 Vol.35 No.1, pp.40 - 50

Received: 16 Apr 2020
Accepted: 16 Apr 2020
Published online: 26 Feb 2021 *

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