A two-layered subgoal based mobile robot navigation algorithm with vision system and IR sensors

The present work describes the real-life implementation of a mobile robot navigation scheme where vision sensing is employed as primary sensor for path planning and IR sensors are employed as secondary sensors for actual navigation of the mobile robot with obstacle avoidance capability in a static or dynamic indoor environment. This two-layer based, goal-driven architecture utilizes a wireless camera in the first layer to acquire image and perform image processing, online, to determine subgoal, employing a shortest path algorithm, online. The subgoal information is then utilized in the second layer to navigate the robot utilizing IR sensors. Once the subgoal is reached, vision based path planning and IR guided navigation is reactivated. This sequential process is continued in an iterative fashion until the robot reaches the goal. The algorithm has been effectively tested for several real-life environments created in our laboratory and the results are found to be satisfactory.