Virtual Environment Building and Navigation of Mobile Robot using Command Fusion and Fuzzy Inference

This paper propose a fuzzy inference model for map building and navigation for a mobile robot with an active camera, which is intelligently navigating to the goal location in unknown environments using sensor fusion, based on situational command using an active camera sensor. Active cameras provide a mobile robot with the capability to estimate and track feature images over a hallway field of view. In this paper, instead of using "physical sensor fusion" method which generates the trajectory of a robot based upon the environment model and sensory data. Command fusion method is used to govern the robot navigation. The navigation strategy is based on the combination of fuzzy rules tuned for both goal-approach and obstacle-avoidance. To identify the environments, a command fusion technique is introduced, where the sensory data of active camera sensor for navigation experiments are fused into the identification process. Navigation performance improves on that achieved using fuzzy inference alone and shows significant advantages over command fusion techniques. Experimental evidences are provided, demonstrating that the proposed method can be reliably used over a wide range of relative positions between the active camera and the feature images.