Speed control strategy of geophysical measurement platform for archaeological prospection: A conceptual study

Shallow geophysics have become an important tool in archaeological prospection (i.e. the investigation of archaeological remains without recurring to excavations). This paper presents the conceptual study for speed control of geophysical measurement platform for archaeological prospection on challenging terrain using a fuzzy logic approach. A traversal-terrain speed behavior is introduced to have suitable platform movement on the interested terrain regions. The regional traverse-terrain behavior is complemented by following behaviors: traversal terrain behaviors, local obstacle avoiding and geophysical investigating behavior. The fuzzy based speed control strategy has several advantages. Firstly, the fuzzy logic rules that govern the autonomous geophysical measurement platform (AGMP) motion are simpler and more understandable since it can emulate the archaeologist drivers knowledge and experience. Secondly, the behavior-based strategy has a modular structure that can be extended to incorporate new behaviors. The experiments are implemented on a Lego robot to test the proposed approach.