Swarm Robot Control for Human Services and Moving Rehabilitation by Sensor Fusion

Abstract

A current trend in robotics is fusing different types of sensors having different characteristics to improve the performance of a robot system and also benefit from the reduced cost of sensors. One type of robot that requires sensor fusion for its application is the service robot. To achieve better performance, several service robots are preferred to work together, and, hence, this paper concentrates on swarm service robots. Swarm service mobile robots operating within a fixed area need to cope with dynamic changes in the environment, and they must also be capable of avoiding dynamic and static obstacles. This study applies sensor fusion and swarm concept for service mobile robots in human services and rehabilitation environment. The swarm robots follow the human moving trajectory to provide support to human moving and perform several tasks required in their living environment. This study applies a reference control and proportional-integral (PI) control for the obstacle avoidance function. Various computer simulations are performed to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method.