Environment map building using low-cost IR sensors and a servo motor for mobile robot

This paper presents an environment map building method to detect and to avoid obstacles using a low-cost IR sensor and the turn angle of a servo motor for autonomous mobile robots. The environment map building methods widely used by autonomous mobile robots require an expensive sensor or several sensors, such as camera, laser sensor and so on. With the method we present, an autonomous robot can draw the environment map without using the several expensive sensors. We control the mobile robot through the IR sensor on the servo motor for increasing the obstacle recognition range. The distance data and the angle of the motor are used to draw an environment map. The proposed method was verified in a controlled environment by experiment.