Real time multi-sensor fusion and navigation for mobile robots

Abstract

This paper presents a multi-sensor system for combining measurements from ultrasonic and infrared sensors and navigation for any mobile robot. Using this kind of sensor fusion, one mobile robot can be used to solve the obstacle detection, avoidance and path-planning problems inside any working environment. The implementation uses a mobile robot equipped with an on-board microcomputer and a ring, called infrasonic ring, which consists of an array of twelve ultrasonic and seventy-two infra-red echo ranging sensors to obtain a 360-degree sweep horizontally. Measurement data gathered from the infrasonic ring are integrated to help the mobile robot avoid unknown obstacles and plan the target-path using the 'artificial potential field' concept. In this study, we assume that the precise position and orientation information of the mobile robot are updated using our previous robot localization studies.