Multifunctional Intelligent Autonomous Parking Controllers for Carlike Mobile Robots

An increasing number of carlike mobile robot (CLMR) studies have addressed the issues of autonomous parking and obstacle avoidance. An autonomous parking controller can provide convenience to a novice driver. However, if the controller is not designed adequately, it may endanger the car and the driver. Therefore, this paper presents a novel multifunctional intelligent autonomous parking controller that is capable of effectively parking the CLMR in an appropriate parking space, by integrating sensor data capable of obtaining the surrounding data of the robot. An ultrasonic sensor array system has been developed with group-sensor firing intervals. A binaural approach to the CLMR has been adopted for providing complete contactless sensory coverage of the entire workspace. The proposed heuristic controller can obtain the posture of a mobile robot in a parking space. In addition, the controller can ensure the ability of the CLMR to withstand collision to guarantee safe parking. Moreover, the CLMR can recognize the parking space and the obstacle position in dynamic environment. Therefore, the proposed controller installed in a car could ensure safe driving. Finally, practical experiments demonstrate that the proposed multifunctional intelligent autonomous parking controllers are feasible and effective.