Sensor-Based Autonomous Robot Navigation with Distance Control

Abstract

Intelligent systems to increase the road safety have been widely applied in the automotive sector; similarly, they have critical importance in the robotics to navigate the robot safely. This paper deals with an automatic distance control system, which helps to avoid collision between vehicles. We present an algorithm to maintain a distance between the robot and the object. It keeps the autonomous mobile robot at a safe distance from the object. It is implemented in a wheeled mobile robot to track the moving object. The surrounding information is obtained through the range sensors that are mounted at the front side of the robot. The central sensor gives instructions for the forward and backward motion, and the other sensors help for the left and right motion. To avoid collision, safety distance, which makes the movement easy in the out of range, stop, forward, and backward modes, is predefined in the mobile robot. Each time the range data is compared with the predefined distance measurements, and the respected function is activated. The robot is characterized due to low cost and simple control architecture. Different experiments were carried out in the indoor and outdoor environments with different objects. Simulation and experimental results have shown that the robot tracks the object correctly by maintaining a constant distance from the followed object.