Simulation in the Development of Mobile Robot Controllers, Tread Warily

摘要

This paper describes work carried out on the development of mobile robot controllers. The control paradigm used on the robot is subsumption with enhancements based on fuzzy logic. The fuzzy logic combines "behaviour-based" navigation and obstacle avoidance outputs. Much of the development work was carried out in simulation. At the point of implementing the developed control software on the target robot, however, many problems were encountered. This threw into some doubt the approach of using a simulated model of the environment for controller development. The real-world problems and scenarios encountered by a robot are often overlooked- or oversimplified in a simulated scenario. Simulation has its uses in early system development but for development of autonomous robots designed to operate in the unstructured real world significant further development is essential on the target system.