A Behaviour Based Hierarchical Fuzzy Control Architecture For Agricultural Real Time Autonomous Mobile Robots

Abstract

This paper describes the preparatory design and construction work for a of real-time autonomous mobile robot aimed at navigating in real farms with no operator intervention. The agricultural environment being targeted consists of an irregular terrain supporting crops or sparsely populated with objects. This results in complex problems of identification, monitoring and control. In this paper we introduce a fuzzy hierarchical controller for autonomous mobile robot for use in such agricultural environments. This controller utilises co-operating behaviours (obstacle avoidance, edge following, goal seeking) to navigate in tight spaces and navigate towards its target (bales of hay, boxes of fruit/vegetables). The proposed system simplifies fuzzy controller design and provides a control architecture with a fast response, robust performance, and the ability to deal with dynamic environments. This paper describes the preliminary development work in which the proposed controller architecture was tested on an in-door mobile robot. The next phase will concern the transfer of this work to our outdoor electrical and diesel robots .