ELECTRONICALLY DRIVEN MOBILE PLATFORM

150712G=W.P.V.V.Withanapathirana

150691M=Y.L.G.C.L.Wickramathilaka

150722L=W.W.A.T.I.Fernando
Introduction

Mobile autonomous robotics can be considered as one of the most key topics in recent researches. In
this category the robot is supposed to move from one place to another for some specific purpose. This
purpose could be mowing a lawn or shifting objects from one room to other in a home or simply
exploring an open field. It has a wide range of applications, such as using for warehouse management,
healthcare equipment management, construction, manufacturing, waste management, space
exploration, and military transportation.

In order to understand behavior of autonomous robotics. Consider a situation where person have to
travel from one room to adjacent another room. Let’s say 1st room as A and the other one as B, let’s
imagine he/she does not know the path from A to B. Starting from point X(arbitrary point in the room
A) in A room person have no idea to select particular direction at the beginning. He understands the
fact that he has to get out of the present room and then go to room B. For this he has to find an exit
from the A room. He uses his eyes to understand the location of the door for room A. His eyes and
brain makes him understand that there is no object in his way to the door if he can simply go towards
the door in straight direction. He then uses this information collected from his sensory organs to direct
himself towards the door and 2 hence towards room B. In other words, he uses his sensory organs
(eyes) and control system (brain) to plan his path towards room B. An autonomous robot is such a
person who has no beforehand data about navigation and which needs some algorithm to be used for
creating the directions for navigation.
Process

Process start with one of the key concepts of autonomous mobile robots,

SLAM (Simultaneous localization and mapping)

Robot use sensors for data collection to understand its surroundings. This data is used to build a virtual
map of its surroundings .This is called as Mapping. A robot that navigates using this map must be able
to accurately calculate its position with respect to the landmarks in the map, and locate itself in this
map. This is known as Localization. To maneuver along an optimal path both mapping and
localization is necessary. This field is referred to as Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM)

Most import thing regarding mapping is that it starts from a point of zero data. As data is gathered new
features are checked for repetition and then added or estimated accordingly.

The basics of mapping is comprised of three parts:

 Data prediction -gather data using sensory inputs

(Sensors such as lasers, sonar, and Laser Detection and Ranging (LIDARs) are used for data
collection and for map integration. And most modern automobile robots use LIDAR because
its high precision and resolution it provides in distances measured. This feature is tapped to
make a detailed study of the environment for various possible angular resolutions depending
on the LIDAR used.)
 Data association -using some algorithm build an estimation of the environment
In any particular state, obstacle points could be present anywhere in the environment, but it is
important to ignore those points that would not lie along its intended path. However, if these
obstacles are present directly in the path of the vehicle, they are classified as a threat. The
process of detecting a threat involves studying a certain degree readings directly in front of the
vehicle which are calculated based on a safe-distance and the minimum clearance required for
the vehicle to pass safely.

Normally obstacle recognize as set of points. So some tend to use obstacle Growth Algorithm
Once an obstacle is detected, every point in the entire scanning range is considered to be a
point obstacle and is “grown” by the half the clearance width of the vehicle w/2. This allows
for the vehicle to be considered to be a point object since its dimensions are superimposed on
the entire environment. This makes problem more easily solve.
  Map building -build a map using the data gathered in previous two steps which the robot
can use for its environment.
In short, mapping gives us a virtual or visual representation of the actual environment which
shall be used by the robot to do any of its prescribed action.

Over the years SLAM has been solved using various algorithms like Extended Kalman Filter (EKF)
SLAM, Fast SLAM and Rao-Blackwellized. Most of these algorithms use various probabilistic and
state space model based approaches.The need for a probabilistic solution arises because the data
obtained from the sensors and from the movement of robot itself can be affected by noise

Next most important thing regarding mobile autonomous robots is path planning.

Path planning

Path planning in robotics is defined as navigation that shall be collision free and most optimum for the
autonomous vehicle to maneuver from a source to its destination for any mobile robot path planning
can only be applied if the mapping and localization has been finished beforehand, which simply means
only when the vehicle has complete knowledge of its surroundings and its own position in this
surrounding, it can further plan its way towards the destination. Their might be multiple ways to reach
the goal. It is the path planning which decides upon these paths and formulates an algorithm for the
most effective path.

After path planning next comes the navigation, There are some very famous methods for robot
navigation like wall-following, edge detection, line following. One of the commercial systems uses
wall following method on a floor cleaning robot. A more general and commonly employed method for
obstacle avoidance is based on edge detection. A disadvantage with obstacle avoidance based on edge
detecting is the need of the robot to stop in front of an obstacle in order to provide a more accurate
measurement.
Improvements of autonomous mobile robots

1).all terrain mobile robots

Above mentioned all the mobile robot process will be applied in this case. Though most of path
panning as well as mapping and localization algorithms have been successful for indoor applications,
for outdoors the results have not been very satisfactory. This is because of complex outdoor
environments and dynamic situations. When outdoors there are more chances that that the
environment will change over time. To make the planning robust, algorithms further take into
consideration the undeterministic factors especially when in the outdoors Gaussian noise distribution
and Markov models will be used.

Depending on the locomotion method used in the robot algorithms changed accordingly.

2).swarm robots and formation control

Swarm robotics is a specific research field of multi robotics where a large number of mobile robots are
controlled in a coordinated way. Formation control is one of the most challenging goals for the
coordination control of swarm robots. The swarm robots can form or keep various formations, for
example, line, orthogonal, and triangle or according to customer required method.

There are three main methods to implement formation control, namely,

 Behavior-based formation control

The behavior-based formation control method utilizes a set of predefined basic behaviors,
such as moving-to-target, keeping-formation, and avoiding-obstacles. This method is more
suitable to distributed millirobot system and every robot is strongly autonomous. But there is
no clear definition to group behaviors for swarm robots, and it is difficult to guarantee the
stability of a desired formation when the environment is complex. The overall behavior
conducted by a robot is the combination of several sub behaviors, that is, moving to the goal,
avoiding obstacles, wall-following, avoiding robot, and formation keeping.
 Leader-follower
The leader-follower method designates one robot as the leader and the others as followers. The
followers keep a certain distance and direction angle from the leader.
  Virtual structure methods
This method consider the swarm robot system as an inflexible entity. The robots are regarded
as some points in the system. This method defines the structure of the overall behavior of the
robot formations, but the stringent requirements to maintain a virtual structure formation
movement limit the application of this method.

The control design of swarm robot systems is quite complex because a lot of issues should be
considered, such as formation keeping, communication, and coordination between robots.