Distributed implementation of communicating process architectures for autonomous mobile robots

This paper describes the implementation of a parallel distributed control architecture for autonomous mobile robots. Based on a modular and hierarchical approach the control architecture is defined as a set of communicating sequential processes of autonomous sensing and control modules. The distributed implementation of the process interaction network is realized through synchronous and asynchronous communications among concurrent processes. A method for coordinating obstacle avoidance and trajectory tracking using fuzzy logic is presented based on the concurrent sensing and control framework. The control architecture is successfully implemented for local control and servo control tasks using a network of microcontrollers connected via a serial bus.