Fuzzy Control Architecture for a Mobile Robot System

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paperpresentsthe developmentof an autonomousmo-bile robot controlled by a fuzzy logic controller (FLC).The robot is capable of performing several behavior-basedtasks, such as to follow walls and avoid obstacles, and canbe used for the embodiment of different behaviors. Exper-imental results are given to assess the performance of theFLC and to validate the adopteddesign options for the con-struction and control of the robot. KEY WORDS Fuzzy logic, fuzzy control, modeling, mobile robots, PIDcontroller, CAN network. 1 Introduction Fuzzy logic has emerged in the 1960s, more precisely in1965, when the rst article was published by Zadeh (1965).However, only in the following decade were developed therst applications in the eld of automatic control by Mam-dani (1974). The control by fuzzy logic allows a differentapproach to the problems, in which intuitive knowledge onhow to best control the process should be acquired, and thisinformation will be part of the FLC [1],[2].Nowadays, one of the main applications of FLC isin the area of autonomous robotics, where several workson behavior-based fuzzy control have been developed[3],[4],[5]. In [6] it is presented a navigation system basedon behaviors using fuzzy logic. The idea behind this ap-proach is making the system more modular and, thus, sim-plifyingthesolutionofnavigationandofferingthepossibil-ity to add new behaviors without increasing the complexityof the whole system. In [7] it is also discussed a naviga-tion system based on behaviors using FLC for a quadrupedrobot. The authors propose a new method to mix and coor-dinate the various behaviors at the same time. The conceptpresented is similar to the mixture of contexts. Finally, in[8]it is also proposedtheuse ofa fuzzycontrollerforanau-tonomous mobile robot whose implemented tasks are fol-lowing walls, avoiding obstacles and emergencybehaviors.Thispaperpresentsthedevelopmentofa mobilerobotfrom the scratch, with an open and distributed architecture,controlled by fuzzy logic, and capable for the embodimentof different behaviors. The rest of the paper is organized asfollows. Section 2 addresses the design of the autonomousrobot while section 3 is concerned with the design of theFLC and the implementation of the several behaviors. Sec-tion 4 presents some experimental results showing the ef-fectiveness of the adopted design options for the construc-tion and control of the robot. Finally, section 5 draws themain conclusions.