Experimental investigation on coverage performance of a chaotic autonomous mobile robot

• We experimentally investigate the coverage performance of a chaotic autonomous mobile robot.
• The robot’s motion controller is based on a microcontroller for realizing a chaotic random bit generator.
• The chaotic system in the proposed generator is a discrete chaotic system, the Logistic map.
• An ultrasonic distance sensor for providing short-range distances to obstacles or boundaries has been used.
• The robot scans fast with unpredictable way the chosen workspace.

In many autonomous mobile robotic missions the complete and fast coverage of the workspace, scanned by an unpredictable trajectory, plays a crucial role. To satisfy these special demands in the design of an autonomous mobile robot, a motion controller, based on the dynamical behavior of a known discrete chaotic system, the Logistic map, is presented in this paper. The proposed method is based on a microcontroller for realizing a chaotic random bit generator and converting the produced chaotic bit sequence, to the robot’s trajectory of motion. The experimental results confirm that this approach, with an appropriate sensor for obstacle avoidance, can obtain very satisfactory results in regard to the fast scanning of the robot’s workspace with unpredictable way.