Path optimisation of a mobile robot using an artificial neural network controller

Abstract

This article proposed a novel approach for design of an intelligent controller for an autonomous mobile robot using a multilayer feed forward neural network, which enables the robot to navigate in a real world dynamic environment. The inputs to the proposed neural controller consist of left, right and front obstacle distance with respect to its position and target angle. The output of the neural network is steering angle. A four layer neural network has been designed to solve the path and time optimisation problem of mobile robots, which deals with the cognitive tasks such as learning, adaptation, generalisation and optimisation. A back propagation algorithm is used to train the network. This article also analyses the kinematic design of mobile robots for dynamic movements. The simulation results are compared with experimental results, which are satisfactory and show very good agreement. The training of the neural nets and the control performance analysis has been done in a real experimental setup.