Decentralized control system for autonomous navigation based on an evolved artificial immune network

Abstract

This paper investigates an autonomous control system of a mobile robot based on the immune network theory. The immune network navigates the robot to solve a multiobjective task, namely, garbage collection: the robot must find and collect garbage, while it establishes a trajectory without colliding with obstacles, and return to the base before it runs out of energy. Each network node corresponds to a specific antibody and describes a particular control action for the robot. The antigens are the current state of the robot, read from a set of internal and external sensors. The network dynamics corresponds to the variation of antibody concentration levels, which change according to both mutual interaction of antibody nodes and of antibodies and antigens. It is proposed an evolutionary mechanism to determine the network configuration, that is, the parameters that define those interactions. Simulation results suggest that the proposal presented is very promising.