Self-localization and obstacle avoidance for a mobile robot

This article presents a fast self-localization method based on ZigBee wireless sensor network and laser sensor, an obstacle avoidance algorithm based on ultrasonic sensors for a mobile robot. The positioning system and positioning theory of ZigBee which can obtain a rough global localization of the mobile robot are introduced. To realize accurate local positioning, a laser sensor is used to extract the features from environment, then the environmental features and global reference map can be matched. From the matched environmental features, the position and orientation of the mobile robot can be obtained. To enable the mobile robot to avoid obstacle in real-time, a heuristic fuzzy neural network is developed by using heuristic fuzzy rules and the Kohonen clustering network. The experiment results show the effectiveness of the proposed method.