Using the dynamical system approach to navigate in realistic real-world environments

The dynamical system approach to behaviour based robotics provides a sound mathematical framework to behaviour design and integration. So far this approach has been used in various simulation work and in simple real world settings. This paper is a first step towards application in a more realistic scenario such as a typical office environment. The robot perceives its environment via a set of sonar sensors. Simple geometric representations of the corridor and obstacles are extracted from the perceptual information. Obstacle avoidance and corridor following are implemented as the basic behaviours, which allow the robot to navigate safely through its environment. The robot can reliably distinguish between passages that are either wide enough to pass or too narrow to be traversed. Coordination among the primitive behaviours allows the robot to cope with more complex situations, such as a corridor that is blocked by obstacles, in a flexible manner