Reactive human-aware wall following for indoor mobile robot

This paper describes the development of an indoor robotic surveillance system based on reactive wall following and human detection built on intelligent differential-drive mobile robot navigation. For this development of a surveillance mobile robot system that is assistive to human surveillance, we employ a commercially available wheeled mobile robot equipped with infrared sensors, sonar sensors and human detection sensors for perceiving the local indoor environment and detecting human presence. The system has two components: reactive wall following and human detection. The wall following is performed by a two-input (distances) single-output (heading angle) interval type-2 fuzzy logic system for heading direction control of a constant speed unicycle with online decision rules specifically designed for the task of stable right wall following. Proper reaction to the presence of an unexpected human is enabled in the wall-following course by human detection sensors. The design and implementation of an autonomous mobile robot human-aware surveillance system using reactive right wall following and human detection for two indoor surveillance tasks is demonstrated to work well in our lab testing.