A mobile robot for corridor navigation

Abstract

This project focuses on building an autonomous vehicle as the test bed for the future development of an intelligent wheelchair, by proposing a framework for designing and implementing a mobile robot control program that is easily expandable and portable to other robotic platforms. Using a robot equipped with a minimal set of sensors such as a camera and infrared sensors, our multi-agent based control system is built to tackle various problems encountered during corridor navigation. The control system consists of four agents: an agent responsible for handling sensor inputs, an agent which identifies a corridor using machine vision techniques, an agent which avoids collisions by applying fuzzy logic decision making to proximity data, and an agent responsible for locomotion. In the experiments, the robot's performance demonstrates the feasibility of a multi-agent approach.