Where Am I? Autonomous Navigation System of a Mobile Robot in an Unknown Environment

A navigation system is a program that provides graphical maps, co-ordinates or directions to a destination. Now autonomous navigation system of a mobile robot involves self-steering of a robot from one place to another based on computational resources on-board the robot. There are several ways to approach mobile robot navigation. This paper discusses the most common algorithms used for any kind of mobile robots for navigational purpose which are go-to-goal, avoiding obstacles, following wall and path planning. Sonar range sensors are used as the sensing elements and wheel encoders are used for robot localization. Simulation results are presented to verify the effectiveness of the proposed navigation system in an unknown environment which contain convex and concave objects. To test the proposed algorithms in real life, a differential drive wheeled robot which is a kind of mobile robot, has been made. However, this paper also contains the motor model of differential drive wheeled robot.