Arbitration of Multiple Control Strategies for Mobile Robots

Abstract

Reliability and robustness are of primary importance in a mobile robot control system. Widely. varying operating environments place such stringent. demands on the navigation system that no single controller, no matter how sophisticated, is adequate for sustained operation. Consequently sustained operation in the face of changing environmental conditions may be possible only by running several different controllers concurrently. We propose an arbitration mechanism which accepts inputs from multiple controllers, then generates a single optimal result, This arbitor draws upon a knowledge base which defines the limits within which each controller's algorithm will give adequate performance.