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Abstract—One important problem in autonomous robot naviga- law is adopted and [3], [4] using the dynamic feedback lineariza-
tion is the effective following of an unknown path traced in the tion technique. A recursive technique for nonholonomic sys-
environment in compliance with the kinematic limits of the ve- tems in chained form, based on the backstepping paradigm, was
hicle, i.e., bounded linear and angular velocities and accelerations.
In this case, the motion planning must be implemented in real- proposed in [5], while a sliding-mode-based approach, which is
time and must be robust with respect to the geometric character- robust to bounded external disturbances, has been presented in
istics of the unknown path, namely curvature and sharpness. To [6], [7]. An interesting experimental comparison study of sev-
achieve good tracking capability, this paper proposes a path fol- eral control laws proposed in the literature has been recently
lowing approach based on a fuzzy-logic set of rules which emu- presented in [8].
lates the human driving behavior. The input to the fuzzy system is
represented by approximate information concerning the next bend A trajectory can be seen as a path to be described with a given
ahead the vehicle; the corresponding output is the cruise velocity time law; nevertheless, in a number of applications (e.g., road
that the vehicle needs to attain in order to safely drive on the path. following) only the path is strictly specified while the time law
To validate the proposed algorithm two completely different exper- can be changed from the preplanned one or can be freely gen-
iments have been run: in the first experiment, the vehicle has to per- erated in run time. In particular, the degree of freedom on the
form a lane-following task acquiring lane information in real-time
using an onboard camera; in the second, the motion of the vehicle choice of the time law can be used to accomodate both the kine-
is obtained assigning in real-time a given time law. The obtained matic constraints imposed by nonholonomy and the bounds on
results show the effectiveness of the proposed method. the linear and angular velocity and accelerations allowed by the
Index Terms—Fuzzy control, mobile robots, motion planning, actuating system. Consequently, there is a velocity-dependent
navigation, path tracking. lower bound on the radius of curvature that can be achieved by
the vehicle and the robot might not be able to follow a curve path
during a too fast motion. Hence, different approaches to the path
I. INTRODUCTION tracking problem in presence of kinematic and/or dynamic con-
straints have been proposed, see for example [9]–[11].
(2)
A discrete-time version of the dynamic model (1) is
Fig. 1. Top-view sketch of a differential-drive mobile robot with relevant vari- (3)
ables.
(7)
that thus does not need to be changed in order to implement with ; this corresponds to underestimating the maximum
the proposed approach. Moreover, the fuzzyfication module re- achievable curvature.
quires information of the current vehicle position that may come In addition to (7), to quantify how far is the next bend on the
either from the robot odometry or from external sensors de- path, the fuzzyfication module relies on the linguistic variable
pending on the specific experiments. distance, , which is a measure of the time distance between the
next bend and the vehicle.
In the remainder, two different implementation of this module
A. Fuzzyfication Module
will be presented in the experimental case study.
To quantify how narrow is the next bend on the path, the
fuzzyfication module relies on path curvature information. In B. FIS
particular, the ratio The proposed path tracking algorithm uses a FIS to emulate
the human driving behavior. For example, if at time the fuzzy-
fication module estimates a large value of and a small value
(5) of , the FIS commands the velocities module to slow down the
vehicle since a narrow bend is going to be engaged. Then, the
output of the FIS is the new maximum allowed value for the
represents the current curvature of the motion trajectory as the
linear velocity, i.e., the one that substituted in (6) gives ,
inverse of its radius of curvature. Equation (5) clearly shows that
see (7).
tracking of narrow bends requires a relatively high angular ve-
The membership functions of the two normalized variables
locity with low linear velocity. Moreover, for any given constant
and are shown in Figs. 3 and 4, respectively. Both member-
linear velocity, the presence of a limit imposed on the angular
ship functions are triangular to simplify defuzzyfication. Notice
velocity brings to an upper bound on the curvature achiev-
that the linguistic variable curve is normalized so that a curve
able by the vehicle, given by
whose curvature is the maximum achievable at the current ad-
vancing velocity (that gives ) is placed at 0.5; therefore,
membership of a curve to the sets smooth, appropriate, narrow
(6)
is evaluated against the threshold value 0.5 of the normalized
214 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON FUZZY SYSTEMS, VOL. 15, NO. 2, APRIL 2007
C. Velocities Module
The velocities module determines the reference value of the
linear and angular velocities to be fed to the motion controller
of the vehicle. To this aim, let first compute the quantities
(8)
Fig. 5. Fuzzy surface for the membership functions distance and curve when (9)
is small.
(10)
where the subscript “des” denotes the desired value of the vari-
able, and are control gains, and is obtained by
integration of . It can be recognized that in absence of
kinematic limits the control action
(11)
Fig. 7. Implementation of the scaling technique when linear velocity and ac-
celeration are saturated.
Fig. 12. Output of the FIS algorithm for the lane-following experiment. It can
Fig. 10. View on the ground plane (in vehicle-fixed coordinates) of the image be recognized that the algorithm requires to slow down the vehicle in presence
in Fig. 9. The filled area is the map of the image area; the extracted lane and its of the bend and then to accelerate when the bend is terminated.
interpolation are also shown.
Fig. 11. Normalized input curve of the FIS algorithm for the lane-following
experiment.
Fig. 14. Path traced by the vehicle during the lane-following experiment.
Fig. 16. Desired path in the first experiment of tracking a planned trajectory.
Fig. 15. Paths traced by the vehicle during different lane-following experi-
ments with different light conditions and low level control gains. The paths have
been reconstructed by means of the sole odometry.
Fig. 17. Desired path in the second experiment of tracking a planned trajectory.
Fig. 19. Real (solid) and desired (dashdotted) path after t = 7 s from the
start-up time for the S-shaped path.
Fig. 21. Case of the S-shaped path. Top: Reference (solid) and measured (dash-
dotted) linear velocity. Bottom: Reference (solid) and measured (dashdotted)
angular velocity.
Fig. 23. Case of the S-shaped path. Top: Linear acceleration. Bottom: angular
acceleration.
Fig. 27. Case of the 8-shaped path. Top: Reference (solid) and measured (dash-
Fig. 24. Case of the 8-shaped path. Real (solid) and virtual (dashdotted) time. dotted) linear velocity. Bottom: Reference (solid) and measured (dashdotted)
angular velocity.
Fig. 28. Real (solid) and desired (dashdotted) path for the 8-shaped path.
Fig. 25. Real (solid) and desired (dashdotted) path after t = 6 s from the
start-up time for the 8-shaped path.
velocities are reported in Fig. 27. Also in this second experi-
ment, it can be recognized that the algorithm outputs smooth
velocity. Conversely, when the vehicle is approaching a visible and bounded reference values while, due to tracking errors and
(i.e., known) bend, the fuzzy module lowers the linear velocity low-resolution measurement, the actual ones are quite noisy.
of the vehicle according to the estimated curvature of the bend. After about 40 s from the beginning of the experiment, the ve-
Then, the overall time history of presents a constant, de- hicle has completed the desired path. The actual path described
creasing and increasing shaping, respectively, between two ex- together with the desired one are depicted in Fig. 28 for compar-
treme values. The linear and angular reference and measured ison. Finally, Fig. 29 reports the time histories of the linear and
220 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON FUZZY SYSTEMS, VOL. 15, NO. 2, APRIL 2007
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ANTONELLI et al.: MOBILE ROBOT PATH TRACKING 221
[32] B. Southall and C. Taylor, “Stochastic road shape estimation,” in Stefano Chiaverini (SM’02) was born in Naples,
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205–212. degree and the Ph.D. degree in electronics engi-
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via dynamic feedback linearization,” in Proc. 6th IFAC Symp. Robot 1990, respectively.
Contr., Wien, A, Sep. 2000, pp. 397–402. Currently, he is a Professor of Automatic Control
[34] Z. Zhang, “Flexible camera calibration by viewing a plane from with the Engineering Faculty, University of Cassino,
unknown orientations,” in Proc. 7th IEEE Int. Conf. Comput. Vision, Italy, where he is Vice Head of the Department of
Kerkyra, GR, Sep. 1999, pp. 20–27. Automation, Electromagnetics, Information Engi-
neering and Industrial Mathematics. His research
interests include manipulator inverse kinematics
techniques, redundant manipulator control, cooperative robot systems,
force/position control of manipulators, underwater robotic systems, and mobile
robotic systems. He has published more than 140 international journal and
conference papers. He is coeditor of the book Complex Robotic Systems (New
York: Springer-Verlag, 1998) and coauthor of the book Fondamenti di Sistemi
Dinamici (Milan, Italy: McGraw-Hill, 2003).
Dr. Chiaverini was an Associate Editor of the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON
ROBOTICS AND AUTOMATION from January 2000 to February 2004, and since
August 2004, has been an Editor of the IEEE/ASME TRANSACTIONS ON
MECHATRONICS.
Gianluca Antonelli (SM’06) was born in Rome,
Italy, on December 19, 1970. He received the Laurea
degree in electronic engineering and the Research
Doctorate degree in electronic engineering and Giuseppe Fusco (M’02) was born in Naples, Italy,
computer science from the University of Naples in in 1961. He received the Laurea degree in electrical
1995 and 2000, respectively. engineering from the University of Naples.
He currently is an Associate Professor at the Uni- He is currently an Associate Professor of Control
versity of Cassino, Cassino, Italy. His research in- Engineering with the Faculty of Engineering of the
terests include simulation and control of underwater University of Cassino, Cassino, Italy. He has pub-
robotic systems, force/motion control of robot ma- lished 60 international journal and conference papers.
nipulators, multirobot systems, identification. He has His field of research deals with power systems adap-
published about 80 international journal and conference papers, he is author of tive control. He is coauthor of the monograph Adap-
the book Underwater Robots (New York: Springer-Verlag, 2003, 2006). tive Voltage Control in Power Systems (New York:
Dr. Antonelli has been an Associate Editor of the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON Springer-Verlag, 2006) within the series “Advances
ROBOTICS since September 1, 2005. in Industrial Control.”