Gaze-guided control of an autonomous mobile robot using type-2 fuzzy logic

Abstract

Motion control of mobile robots in a cluttered environment with obstacles is an important problem. It is unsatisfactory to control a robot’s motion using traditional control algorithms in a complex environment in real time. Gaze tracking technology has brought an important perspective to this issue. Gaze guided driving a vehicle based on eye movements supply significant features of nature task to realization. This paper presents an intelligent vision-based gaze guided robot control (GGC) platform that uses a user-computer interface based on gaze tracking enables a user to control the motion of a mobile robot using eyes gaze coordinate as inputs to the system. In this paper, an overhead camera, eyes tracking device, a differential drive mobile robot, vision and interval type-2 fuzzy inference (IT2FIS) tools are utilized. The methodology incorporates two basic behaviors; map generation and go-to-goal behavior. Go-to-goal behavior based on an IT2FIS is more soft and steady progress in data processing with uncertainties to generate better performance. The algorithms are implemented in the indoor environment with the presence of obstacles. Experiments and simulation results indicated that intelligent vision-based gaze guided robot control (GGC) system can be successfully applied and the IT2FIS can successfully make operator intention, modulate speed and direction accordingly.