Fuzzy Controlled Adaptive Follow the Gap Obstacle Avoidance Algorithm

Abstract

Follow the Gap Method (FGM) and Improved Follow the Gap Method (FGM-I) are geometric obstacle avoidance algorithms for navigation. In these methods, the vehicle detects the gaps around the object and navigates to the midpoint of the optimal gap calculated according to a defined function. One missing point of these algorithms is failure to the goal point when there is an obstacle near to it. Another drawback is that early consideration of obstacles causes long trajectories. In this paper, Adaptive Follow the Gap (A-FGM) is presented to overcome these two points. In A-FGM, a fuzzy controlled evaluation radius is set and only obstacles within this region are included in the evaluation. A differential drive robot is used in simulations and results show that A-FGM increases the success rate of reaching the goal and efficiency of previous algorithms. The source code of the developed approach is shared on GitHub 1.