Fuzzy Social Force Model for Healthcare Robot Navigation and Obstacle Avoidance

Autonomous navigation is one of the important functions of the Healthcare Robot to produce obstacle-free movements in the social environment inhabited by humans. In carrying out its duties, the robot will do a lot of navigation from the origin to the destination. Healthcare Robot uses a Laser Range Finder to detect objects around the robot. The results of detection are distance and angle data from the object. Then, the data is used as input for the Fuzzy Inference System (FIS) process to produce an appropriate gain value to control static and dynamic force of the Social Force Model (SFM). The parameters of the SFM influence the robot's response to the detected object. To obtain the optimal gain value, the FIS is used to change the parameters adaptively. Adaptive parameters are used to prevent the robot from making unexpected navigational behavior that may be dangerous, threatening to others, and potentially self-destructive. From the tests carried out in two conditions, the robot successfully navigated from its initial position to the goal and was able to respond to objects around it with the percentage of success in all scenes was 79.9%.