Sensor-based fuzzy reactive navigation of a mobile robot through local target switching

Fuzzy reactive control, incorporating a local target-switching scheme, is a pplied to the automatic navigation of an intelligent mobile robot in an unk nown and changing environment. Sensed-ranging signals and relative target p osition signals are input to the fuzzy controller. The steering angle and t he velocity change are inferred to drive the mobile robot. A reactive ruleb ase governing the robot behavior is synthesized from the human heuristics w ith respect to various situations of environment. A local target-switching scheme is proposed to serve as a front-end processor of the fuzzy active co ntroller and to deal with the local trapping and wandering cycle problem in the navigation of a behavior-based mobile robot. The algorithm is describe d together with some particular considerations about implementation. Effici ency and effectiveness of the proposed approach are verified through simula tion and experiments conducted on a Nomad 200 mobile robot.