Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Machine Learning and Cybernetics, Guangzhou, 18-21 August 2005
FUZZY LOGIC BASED ROBOT PATH PLANNING IN UNKNOWN
ENVIRONMENT
MENG WANG, JAMES N.K. LIU
Department of Computing, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Hong Kong
E-MAIL: {csmwang, csnkliu}@comp.polyu.edu.hk
Abstract:
This paper proposes a new method, minimum risk
approach, to address the local path planning to escape from
local minimum during goal-oriented robot navigation in
unknown environments. This approach is theoretically proved
to guarantee global convergence even in the long-wall,
unstructured, cluttered, maze-like, and modified environments.
The approach adopts a strategy of multi-behavior
coordination, in which a novel path-searching behavior is
developed to recommend the regional direction with minimum
risk. The paper provides a fuzzy logic framework to
implement the behavior design and coordination. It is verified
by the simulated and real world tests.
Keywords:
Fuzzy control; intelligent control systems; mobile robot
motion planning; local path planning
1. Introduction
We call it “blind goal-oriented navigation” that the
robot is required to autonomously reach a desired goal but
it does not have a priori known environmental knowledge.
The related methods [1-7] can be categorized as two types:
boundary following, and virtual subgoal. Unfortunately,
they have difficulties to guarantee the global convergence
in the complex environments since they may get trapped in
the local minimum (or dead end). This paper proposes a
new method, minimum risk approach, to address the local
path planning to handle the local minimum during the blind
goal-oriented robot navigation. This approach adopts a
strategy of multi-behavior coordination, in which a novel
Path-Searching (PS) behavior is developed to recommend
the regional direction that is offering minimum risk. The
final command output is obtained by coordinating three
behaviors: PS, Obstacle-Avoidance (OA), and
Goal-Seeking (GS). The paper provides a fuzzy logic
framework to implement the behavior design and
coordination. Thus errors due to sensor noise and
self-localization are effectively handled by our navigation
system.
0-7803-9091-1/05/$20.00 ©2005 IEEE
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2. The path searching behavior
The Path-Searching (PS) behavior is one application of
our memory grid technique. The memory grid is a new type
of map for modeling the robot environment. Memory grid
differs from other maps (e.g. occupancy grid, certainty grid,
connectivity graph [8, 9]) chiefly in that it makes use of an
obstacle and trajectory memory dot model. The memory
grid uses the obstacle memory dots to quantify the fuzzy
possibility that represents the uncertainty of obstacles
detected by sonar sensors, while it uses the trajectory
memory dots to save the trajectory traversed by robot. The
longer the robot takes to traverse a grid region, the greater
the number of trajectory memory dots saved in this grid
(see Fig.6(9)). Therefore, the regional direction with the
minimum number of obstacle and trajectory memory dots
can represent the regional direction with the minimum risk.
This direction is the good choice for the robot in trying to
avoid a previous trajectory, and consequently escape from
local minimum and reach the goal. PS behavior does this
job to recommend the direction that entails minimum risk.
2.1. Regional Risk Index
Four features are extracted from memory grid data, in
which iteration risk α and collision risk β are used to
infer the Risk Index for the fuzzy navigational rules of PS
behavior, and the trajectory dot intensity κ and obstacle
dot intensity τ are used in combination with fuzzy logic to
calculate the weight of PS behavior. The magnitude of
iteration risk α is converted into three linguistic fuzzy
sets {LOW, MEDIUM, HIGH}, with the membership functions
shown in Fig. 1(a). The other three are similar.
The Fuzzy Rule-Based Risk Index combines the two
regional risk parameters into a single indicator of safety of
traversal of the region by the mobile robot. The Risk Index
r is represented by three linguistic fuzzy sets {DANGEROUS,
UNCERTAIN, SAFE}, with the membership functions shown
 Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Machine Learning and Cybernetics, Guangzhou, 18-21 August 2005

µ (α ) µ (r )
low medium high dangerous uncertain safe
1 1

α r
0 α1 α2 α3 α4 α5 0 r1 r2 r3 r4 r5
(a) (b)
Fig. 1. Membership functions (a) for iteration risk. (b) for Risk Index

in Fig. 1(b). The Risk Index is defined in terms of both the

iteration risk and the collision risk by a set of simple
intuitive fuzzy logic relations as Table I.

Table I. Rule sets of regional Risk Index r

α β HIGH MEDIUM LOW
HIGH DANGEROUS DANGEROUS DANGEROUS
Table II. Turn rules for path-searching behavior
MEDIUM DANGEROUS DANGEROUS UNCERTAIN
LOW DANGEROUS UNCERTAIN SAFE
Center of Gravity (COG) method is used for defuzzification
[10]. For complexity reduction, we assume that the speed of
2.2. Turn rules and a complement algorithm the robot is only influenced by the OA behavior, not by the
PS or GS behavior. In addition, it is assumed that the robot
The motion control variables of the mobile robot are can only move in the forward direction (i.e., reverse motion
the translational speed and the rotational turn angle. The is not allowed). The region available for robot traversal is
robot speed is represented by three linguistic fuzzy sets divided up into three circular side sectors. The radius of the
{STOP, SLOW, FAST}, with the membership functions shown circular sector is a user-defined regional perception range
in Fig. 2(a). The robot turn angle is represented by five of the robot, i.e., the distance at which we wish the robot to
linguistic fuzzy sets {NB, NS, ZE, PS, PB}, with the react to the regional risk features. The Risk Indices for the
membership functions shown in Fig.2(b), where NB is three regions, rleft , rfront and rright, are inferred by the Risk
negative-big, NS negative-small, ZE zero, PS positive-small, Index rules.
and PB positive-big. Positive and negative mean that the The turn rules for the PS behavior are summarized in
robot turns to the left and right, respectively. Table II. Notice that in Table II, when the robot needs to
µ (θ ) turn, but the left and right sectors have the same Risk
µ (v ) fast Indices, then the recommended turn angle is GOAL, where
stop slow NB NS ZE PS PB
1 GOAL implies that the recommended turn angle should be
toward the direction close to the goal location. Another
v θ
0 v1 v2 v3 −θ3 −θ 2 −θ1 0 θ1 θ2 θ3 Algorithm: MINIMUM COLLISION & ITERATION (MCI):
(a) (b) {
Fig. 2. Membership functions (a) for speed. (b) for turn angle. Step 1: IF the turn direction recommended by the turn
rules has a lower iteration risk than the threshold α1 , THEN
maintain this original turn direction and return; OTHERWISE
go to Step 2.
Step 2: To check whether or not there are regional
directions with a lower collision risk than the threshold β1 . IF
not, THEN maintain the original turn direction and return;
OTHERWISE go to Step 3.
Step 3: IF there exists only one regional direction that has
Fig.3. Turn angle determination of PS behavior by both Turn Rules and a lower collision risk, THEN this regional direction is
MCI Algorithm recommended as the turn direction and return; OTHERWISE
go to Step 4.
Step 4: IF there exist multiple regional directions that
The Risk Index is used to develop simple fuzzy rules have a lower collision risk, THEN a regional direction that has
for determination of the robot turn angle as shown in Fig.3. a minimum iteration risk value is recommended as the turn
direction and return.
FLC implies the fuzzy logic controller. We use a Mamdani }
model as a fuzzy inference engine, and the Centroid or

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 Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Machine Learning and Cybernetics, Guangzhou, 18-21 August 2005

important note, a turn maneuver is not initiated when the turn, but the left and right sectors have the same obstacle
three sectors have the same dangerous risk indices as distance, then the recommended turn angle is GOAL, where
shown in the (1,1) element of the top layer in Table II. The GOAL implies that the recommended turn angle should be
turn rule does not at this stage force the robot to arbitrarily toward the direction close to the goal location. This is
choose between left and right, but maintains the turn angle similar to the turn rules for PS behavior. One last important
at zero. The final selection will be made by a complement note: when the three sectors have the same VERYNEAR
algorithm, Minimum Collision & Iteration (MCI). The MCI obstacle distance as shown in the (3,3) element of the top
algorithm is exact, not fuzzy. layer in Table IV(a), a large left turn (PB) angle is
recommended. This turn rule enables the robot to escape
2.3. Weight rules from its current embarrassed situation.
d right
The weighting factor wps represents the strength by far near verynear
d front
d left far
which the PS behavior recommendation is taken into GOAL PS PB
verynear
account to calculate the final motion command. The weight near
NS GOAL PS
of PS behavior is represented by three linguistic fuzzy sets verynear
NB NS PB
{SMALL, MEDIUM, LARGE}, and is derived directly from d right
both the trajectory dot intensity κ and obstacle dot
far near verynear
dleft far d front
GOAL PS PS
intensity τ of a square region, using the rule sets in Table near
near
NS ZE PS
III. verynear
Table III. Weight rules of the PS behavior NS NS ZE

κ τ HIGH MEDIUM LOW far

d right
near verynear
HIGH LARGE LARGE LARGE d left far d front
ZE ZE PS
far
MEDIUM LARGE LARGE MEDIUM near
ZE ZE PS
LOW LARGE MEDIUM SMALL verynear
NS NS ZE

(a)
d right
3. The obstacle avoidance behavior far near verynear
dleft far d front
large large large
The local Obstacle-Avoidance (OA) behavior is near
verynear
large large large
actually a sensor-based behavior which implements a verynear
large large large
control strategy based on external sensing. OA behavior is d right
effective if obstacles are close. We adopt a fuzzy logic far near verynear
d front
controller for the implementation. The sonar readings of the dleft far
medium large large
near
robot are grouped into three sectors (left, front, right). For near
large large large
example, our robot has a ring of eight forward ultrasonic verynear
large large large
sonars that produce a set of obstacle distances {d0, d1, d2, d right
d3, d4, d5, d6, d7}. We obtain three groups of obstacle far near verynear
dleft far d front
distances by the following equations: dleft = min(d0, d1); small small large
far
dfront = min(d2, d3, d4, d5); dright = min(d6, d7). The near
small medium large
obstacle distance of each sector is represented by three verynear
large large large
linguistic fuzzy sets {VERYNEAR, NEAR, FAR}. The obstacle
(b)
avoidance navigation rules are discussed below. Table IV. (a) Turn rules for OA behavior. (b) Weight rules for OA behavior
The turn rules for the OA behavior are summarized in
Table IV(a). Observe that the rules exhibit such a behavior The robot speed v is based on the close obstacle
characteristic: if the obstacle distance in any sector is distance in the three sectors. The speed rules are as follows.
VERYNEAR, the robot should turn away to find a safer 1) IF dfront is VERYNEAR, THEN v is STOP.
direction. For instance, the (1,3) element of the bottom 2) IF dfront is NEAR, THEN v is SLOW.
layer in Table IV(a) can be written out as the rule: 3) IF dfront is FAR AND dleft is FAR AND dright is FAR, THEN v is
IF dfront is FAR AND dleft is FAR AND dright is VERYNEAR, THEN FAST.
4) IF dfront is FAR AND (dleft is VERYNEAR OR dleft is NEAR OR
θ oa is PS. dright is VERYNEAR OR dright is NEAR), THEN v is SLOW.
In addition, in Table IV(a), when the robot needs to The last rule enables the robot to decrease its speed

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 Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Machine Learning and Cybernetics, Guangzhou, 18-21 August 2005
when an obstacle is closing. Because in the environmental
maps of the tests the exit location is very narrow and often
situated in the lateral wall, a fast speed may cause the robot
to miss the exit.
Like the weight of PS behavior, the weight of OA
behavior woa is represented by three linguistic fuzzy sets
{SMALL, MEDIUM, LARGE}, and is derived directly from
obstacle distances in the three sectors. The weight rules for
the OA behavior are summarized in Table IV(b).
4. The goal seeking behavior
Unlike other approaches [11], we first assume that the
Goal-Seeking (GS) behavior does not influence the speed
of the robot, and contributes only to the rotational turn
angle. Second, we use a very simple analytical model rather
than a set of fuzzy logic navigation rules. We set the turn
angle recommended by the GS behavior as the heading
error between the current robot heading and goal direction.
Thus, the value domain of this turn angle is (-180 ° , 180 ° ].
The weight of GS behavior wgs is based on the weights
of both OA and PS behaviors. Fig. 4 shows the weight
determination of three behaviors. The simple weight rules
are as follows:
1) IF wps is LARGE OR woa is LARGE OR wps is MEDIUM OR woa
is MEDIUM, THEN wgs is SMALL.
2) IF wps is SMALL AND woa is SMALL, THEN wgs is LARGE.
Importantly, the weight of GS behavior is suppressed
and small when any one weight of the OA and PS behaviors
is not SMALL. When the weights of both OA and PS are
SMALL, the GS behavior makes a dominant contribution to
the final control command. Although the GS behavior is
often suppressed, the GOAL factor is reflected in the turn
rules of both OA and PS behaviors (see Tables II and IV). It
is an important factor for the minimum risk approach to
guarantee global convergence.
Fig.4. Weight determination of OA, PS, GS behaviors
5. Performance analysis in theory
Theorem 1: If there exists a solution path for a blind
goal-oriented navigation task, the minimum risk approach
can guarantee the global convergence.
Proof: Limited by the page numbers, we briefly gave
the proof analysis. If there exists a solution path for a blind
816
goal-oriented navigation task, this solution path must have
the minimum obstacle and trajectory memory dots, i.e. the
minimum risk. And the detected regions of the current robot
position must have a regional direction that has a minimum
risk. The minimum risk approach can guarantee to finally
recommend the region direction with minimum risk. Thus
the solution path must be found and the robot finally
reaches the goal. That’s the global convergence. ■
Corollary 1: Even in the modified environment, the
minimum risk approach can guarantee global convergence
if a solution path exists.
(a) (b)
Fig.5. “trial-and-return” behavior phenomenon.
The minimum risk approach produces the
“trial-and-return” behavior phenomenon as shown in
Fig.5(a) and (b). Obviously, if there is not obstacle to block
the nearest exit, the “trial-and-return” behavior
phenomenon must enable the robot to find it and escape
from local minimum. This is the Theorem 2. It is verified
by the experiments in Section 6.
Theorem 2: If there is no obstacle blocking the nearest
exit, the minimum risk approach is guaranteed to find a
nearest exit to escape from the local minimum and
ultimately reach the goal. ■
6. Experimental results
Our approach is tested on a mobile robot (vehicle).
The robot is equipped with a ring of eight forward
ultrasonic sonars that can detect obstacles within three
meters. We verify the performance of our minimum risk
approach that is applied to an unknown long-wall
environment with local minimum as shown in Fig.6.
When the robot starts to move at a normal (maximum)
speed, the number of the memory dots (including the
obstacle and trajectory memory dots) saved in the memory
grid is SMALL, so that the trajectory and obstacle dot
intensity are SMALL (see Section 2). The weight of the PS
behavior is thus small. At this time the weight of the OA
behavior is small as well because the front obstacle is
distant. Consequently, at this time the GS (line c) behavior
makes the dominant contribution to the final motion output
(Fig.6 (1)). When in response to a nearby obstacle the robot
decreases its speed, the number of memory dots increases
and the memory dot intensity becomes MEDIUM or LARGE.
 Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Machine Learning and Cybernetics, Guangzhou, 18-21 August 2005

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5)

(6) (7) (8)

100
OA
80 B PS
GS
60
E Final
) F
e 40
er
g
e 20
d( S A
e
gl 0
n T
a
nr -20
ut
at -40
l
e
D
-60

-80
D Time
C
-100
0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 450 500

(9) (10)
Fig. 6. Minimum risk approach to the long-wall environment with local minimum. (1-8) S is the start, T the goal target. OA is the red line “a”,
PS is the blue line “b”, GS is the black line “c”. (9) Underlying memory grid is shown by the spaced horizontal and vertical lines; The obstacle
memory dots are drawn as the black squares of different size. The larger is the size of the square, the higher the possibility of the obstacle is; The
trajectory memory dots are drawn as the red circles of different size. The larger is the circle, the more the number of trajectory dots is. (10) Turn
angles recommended by different behaviors. For the display, the GS turn angle is a half.

Consequently, the weight of PS behavior increases, and PS
behavior (line b) is effective in these cases (see
(2)(3)(4)(5)(6) in Fig.6); When the front of the robot is
closing upon the obstacles, the weight of OA behavior (line
a) becomes large (see (2)(4)(6) in Fig.6); When the OA or
PS behaviors are dominant, the GS behavior is suppressed
and its weight is small (see (2)(3)(4)(5)(6) in Fig.6). When
the robot is far from the obstacles and is approaching the
goal T at a normal speed, the weights of both OA and PS
behavior are small and only GS behavior is dominant (Fig.6
(7)). Fig. 6(9) shows the underlying memory grid as well as
the control interface.
Observe that in Fig. 6 (8) and (10), the labels A, B, C,
D, E, F, S, and T represent the robot locations. The turn
angles recommended by OA and PS behavior are consistent
during most of the entire task period. At the locations B, C,
and D, the goal T is switched from the left of the robot to
the right, or from the right to the left. This is why the robot
leaves the wall at location D and turn toward location E.
Fig.7(a) and (b) show the results in the maze-like,
unstructured and cluttered environments respectively.
We compare our minimum risk approach with other
related methods. The virtual target method [7] fails to reach
the goal in such concave and recursive U-shape
environment as shown in Fig.8(a), because the robot
encounters another local minimum at the location “b” and
“c” when it is working under the influence of previous
virtual subgoal. Krishna and Kalra’s method [3] has a good
result as shown in Fig.8(b). But it highly depends on the
landmark recognition and exact coordination localization.
In addition, it is difficult to choose a correct direction to
follow the wall boundary as seen in Fig.8(e). Maaref and
Barret’s method [4] fails to reach the goal in such large
concave environment, because it detects the local minimum
using a restricted criterion that all sensors must give the
small obstacle distances at the same time. Fig.8(c) shows
the result of our minimum risk approach. The robot exhibits
the typical “trial-and-return” behavior phenomenon. This
property can help the robot to find the nearest exit to escape
from the local minimum. It’s further verified in the Fig.8(f).
Fig.8(d) shows the result of Huang and Lee’s method [1].
This method has a conservative leaving criterion that makes
the robot traverse a longer path compared with other
methods that adopt the boundary-following strategy. More
importantly, it is still difficult to choose the correct
boundary-following direction. Similar problems occur on
the Distbug method [2] and Virtual-target-side method [5].
Now we exhibit a real world test in a modified

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 Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Machine Learning and Cybernetics, Guangzhou, 18-21 August 2005
environment. Fig.9(a) shows a picture of robot movement.
One person first blocks the exit “A” (Fig. 9(b)), which
forces the robot to turn around in order to look for another
exit. Then the person moves to location “B” where he is
closing the robot but leaves the exit “A” clear. The robot
finds the exit “A” while avoiding the moving obstacle (i.e.
the person). Fig.9(b) shows the actual trajectory and the
obstacle memory dots. Fig.9 (c) shows the memory grid
that saves the trajectory and obstacle memory dots. The
result verifies that there is little influence by odometry drift
problem if our minimum risk approach is applied in a small
scale of space where the local minimum occurs and even it
is dynamic. For the local minimum problem of a large scale
of space, we have to choose other localization technique to
compensate for the drift error.
(a) (b)
Fig.7. Minimum risk approach to address the local minimum problem (a) in
maze-like environment. (b) in unstructured and cluttered environment.
(a) (b) (c)
(d) (e) (f)
Fig.8. (a) virtual target method. (b) Krishna and Kalra’s method. (c) our
minimum risk method. (d) Huang and Lee’s method. (e) Krishna and Kalra’s
method. (f) our minimum risk method.
(a) (b) (c)
Fig.9. Performance in dynamic real world with local minimum
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7. Conclusions
The minimum risk approach is theoretically proved to
guarantee global convergence even in long-wall, large
concave, recursive U-shape, unstructured, cluttered,
maze-like, and modified environments. The fuzzy logic
framework outperforms the analytical methods of detecting
and leaving criteria adopted by other approaches. The test
results can be checked on website [12].
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to acknowledge the partial
support of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University via RGC
grant B-Q515 and departmental grant H-Z87.
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