LiAS: a reflexive navigation architecture for an intelligent mobile robot system

In this paper, a complete hierarchical navigation architecture fur applications in real industrial factory environments is presented. An offline global geometrical planner uses a rough CAD-model of the working environment to plan consecutive via-points which the robot must follow. The navigation between the via-points is performed by a two-level online navigation algorithm. It consists of an online planning module combined with a low-level fuzzy logic avoidance behavior which enables the robot to move to the next goal by only specifying its coordinates in even completely a priori unknown and unstructured factory environments. The system includes a docking motion, based on a dynamic guidance technique. A perception fusion module combines information of three different sensors for accurate modeling of the world. The presented navigation method was tested with the mobile robot Leuven Intelligent Autonomous System (LiAS) and it proved to be useful in real world applications.