Adaptive critic designs in control of robots formation in unknown environment

Abstract

In the presented article a new approach to a collision-free trajectory generating for a wheeled mobile robots formation with Adaptive Critic Designs and Fuzzy Logic algorithm, is proposed. The presented hierarchical control system consists of a trajectory generating algorithm based on a conception of reactive navigation of the wheeled mobile robots formation in the unknown 2D environment, a control system that generates individual trajectories for all agents in formation, and agents tracking control systems. A strategy of reactive navigation is developed including two main behaviours: a obstacle avoiding behaviour and a goal-seeking behaviour, realised in a form of Adaptive Critic Design algorithms. These individual behaviours are combined using two approaches: cooperative connection approach and the fuzzy combiner, that determines influence of the individual behaviours on the trajectory generation process, according to the environment conditions. Computer simulations have been conducted to illustrate the process of path planning in different environment conditions. © 2013 Springer-Verlag.