Colony Scout: Reflexive Obstacle Avoidance

A new algorithm for obstacle avoidance using a single forward looking sensor was developed to test a lower-power mode when the stepper motor is not active. The algorithm follows the "reflexive" model whereby reactions to obstacles are only calculated when an obstacle is present (no high-level or optimized path planning).

Checks are built in to the code to analyze the short term (a few seconds) behavior of the robot and flag "bad" behavior. If the robot gets stuck in turn and can't drive into a free space, a timeout occurs and an escape maneuver is enacted.

The main goal of this algorithm is to allow Scout to explore an entire room or floor without getting stuck. Every few seconds, if the robot is not responding to a higher priority event (cliff, obstacle, etc) a driving pattern is set to either zigzag or growing spiral -- this ensures the robot has some "random" behavior and is not consistently bouncing between two points.

www.danshope.com

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• carnegie mellon
• swarm robotics
• robot
• colony
• technology
• demo
• atv
• ugv
• rugged
• autonomous
• robotics
• CMU
• robotics club
• sonar
• sensor
• scanning
• diy
• reflexive