Behavior-based Autonomous Navigation and Formation Control of Mobile Robots in Unknown Cluttered Dynamic Environments with Dynamic Target Tracking

While different species in nature have safely solved the problem of navigation in a dynamic environment, this remains a challenging task for researchers around the world. The paper addresses the problem of autonomous navigation in an unknown dynamic environment for a single and a group of three wheeled omnidirectional mobile robots (TWOMRs). The robot has to track a dynamic target while avoiding dynamic obstacles and dynamic walls in an unknown and very dense environment. It adopts a behavior-based controller that consists of four behaviors: “target tracking”, “obstacle avoidance”, “dynamic wall following” and “avoid robots”. The paper considers the problem of kinematic saturation. In addition, it introduces a strategy for predicting the velocity of dynamic obstacles based on two successive measurements of the ultrasonic sensors to calculate the velocity of the obstacle expressed in the sensor frame. Furthermore, the paper proposes a strategy to deal with dynamic walls even when they have U-like or V-like shapes. The approach can also deal with the formation control of a group of robots based on the leader-follower structure and the behavior-based control, where the robots have to get together and maintain a given formation while navigating toward the target, avoiding obstacles and walls in a dynamic environment. The effectiveness of the proposed approaches is demonstrated via simulation.