Fuzzy Logic Based Framework for Mobile Robot Navigation with Target Tracking

With the advances of technology, mobile robots are becoming increasingly popular. According to Karthiga (2014) developed countries get the assistance of mobile robots to rescue humans in disaster areas and this has been proven as a productive method to eliminate human error. In such instances robots are required to navigate in hostile environments such as collapsing buildings or areas affected fire. This paper presents implemented control architecture for mobile robot target tracking and obstacle avoidance in a dynamic hostile environment. Given the existing body of research results in the field of obstacle avoidance and path planning, which is reviewed in this context, particular attention is paid to integrate computer vision based sensing mechanisms to robust fuzzy logic based navigation control method. A rule-based fuzzy controller with reactive behaviour was implemented and tested on a RP5 mobile robot platform. Depth and colour information for both navigation and target tracking are to be captured using a Asus Xtion PRO sensor. This traversability data is used to infer, in real time, the navigational path based on the Fuzzy Rule-Base algorithm. The effectiveness of the proposed approach was verified through several experiments, which demonstrates the feasibility of a fuzzy target tracker as well as the extensible obstacle and hostile region avoidance system.