Title: Predictive mechanism of a modified bug controller for mobile robot path navigation

Authors: Subhradip Mukherjee; Rajagopal Kumar; Siddhanta Borah

Addresses: Electronics and Instrumentation Engineering Department, National Institute of Technology (Nagaland), Chümoukedima, Dimapur 797103, Nagaland, India ' Electronics and Instrumentation Engineering Department, National Institute of Technology (Nagaland), Chümoukedima, Dimapur 797103, Nagaland, India ' Electronics and Instrumentation Engineering Department, National Institute of Technology (Nagaland), Chümoukedima, Dimapur 797103, Nagaland, India

Abstract: Bug approaches are popular for mobile robot navigation in challenging environments. Traditional bug approach follows a virtual straight line from source to target location and exhibits obstacle boundary. This behaviour of the bug approach consumes more travel time towards target location. In addition, obstacles with larger size situated in central-left or central-right side of the virtual straight line between source and target location create navigation problems for bug approaches. A modified bug (m-Bug) controller has been proposed and realised for mobile robot path navigation with a better solution in MATLAB and V-REP simulation environments. With range sensors, the proposed controller was found to exhibit better-optimised travel time and path length in the given environments. Different static environments with single and multiple obstacles have been considered for testing the proposed controller. Various simulation results and comparative analysis highlight the superiority of the controller.

Keywords: bug approach; obstacle boundary following behaviour; m-Bug; modified bug controller; V-REP; travel time; path length.

DOI: 10.1504/IJVICS.2022.122546

International Journal of Vehicle Information and Communication Systems, 2022 Vol.7 No.2, pp.101 - 120

Received: 19 Jul 2020
Accepted: 20 Jan 2021
Published online: 03 May 2022 *

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