Fuzzy environment mapping for robot navigation based on grid computing

In order to navigate autonomously, a mobile robot needs to build an environment map where the robot is navigating. Currently, the sensors are mounted on the robot to detect if the obstacles exist and then the map immediate surrounding of the robot is built to help for navigation path planning. The map created by this method is a local map that may cause global navigation problem which a global coverage map is needed to solve such a problem. In this study, a sensor network is deployed for building global environment map. All the sensor locations are assumed known. The navigation space is divided into grids and a grid is to be detected if obstacles exist by one or a number of sensors. Fuzzy set concept is used to introduce a tool useful for sensor perception. Those sensors work as a team to explore all the space and then the global fuzzy map is constructed. The experiments show that the fuzzy map is more practical and helps the path planning problem to be solved more efficiently.