Detecting a target location using a mobile robot with range only measurement

Abstract

This paper addresses the problem of guiding a mobile robot to a point of interest or the target point using only range sensors. The bearing information is not available. The target point can be the source of some gas leakage or nuclear radiation or it can be some landmark or beacon. A control strategy is proposed that can bring the robot arbitrarily closed to the target point. It is shown analytically that this strategy works for any initial condition of the robot with respect to the target point. Simulations are carried out to validate the results obtained in this paper.