A wall-following strategy for mobile robots based on self-convergence

This paper proposes a novel wall-following strategy for mobile robots. This strategy establishes the self-convergence mathematical model by analyzing the relationship between the motion characteristics of mobile robots and installation position of sensors. Different from conventional wall-following approaches that are mostly based on the multi-sensor information fusion technology, this strategy manages to execute the wall-following activity with only a single distance proximity switch. This approach brings several advantages over the previous ones, including the avoidance of mutual interference between sensors and reduction of high hardware cost. In this paper we present the establishment, analysis and implementation of this strategy, with showing the experimental results and giving its potential applications.