Stable AGV corridor navigation based on data and control signal fusion

This work presents a control strategy for mobile robots navigating in corridors, using the fusion of the control signals from two redundant or homogeneous controllers: one based oil optical flow calculation and the other based on the estimates of position of the robot with respect to the centerline of the corridor, which is estimated using data from ultrasonic and vision sensors. Both controllers generate angular velocity commands to keep the robot navigating along the corridor, compensating for the dynamics of the robot. The fusion of both control signals is done through a Decentralized Information Filter. The stability of the resulting control system is analyzed. Experiments oil a laboratory robot are presented to show the feasibility and performance of the proposed control system.