A fuzzy temporal rule-based velocity controller for mobile robotics

This paper describes a velocity controller implemented on a Nomad 200 mobile robot. The controller has been developed for wall-following behaviour, and its design is modularized into two blocks: angular and linear velocity control. A simple design and implementation was made for the former, with the aim of focusing the design efforts on the linear velocity control block, in order to remark the usefulness of this task. The latter has been implemented using an explicit model for knowledge representation and reasoning called fuzzy temporal rules (FTRs). This model enables to explicitly incorporate time as a variable, due to which the evolution of variables in a temporal reference can be described. Using this mechanism we obtain linear velocity values that are adapted to each different circumstance, and thus a higher average velocity as well as smoother and more robust behaviours are achieved. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.