Experiments of fuzzy real-time path planning for unicycle-like mobile robots under kinematic constraints

This paper presents an experimental study concerning the application of a real-time motion planning algorithm to a unicycle-like mobile robot. The desired trajectory to be followed by the mobile robot in presence of bounds on the linear/angular velocities and accelerations is available online. Moreover, with the respect to the kinematic constraints, the desired path has to be kept as long as possible. The implemented algorithm is based on a discrete-time kinematic control which implements a warping of the time law based on the definition of a virtual time. In addition, a fuzzy inference system handles the additional information given by the difference between the virtual and real time in order to exploit the knowledge in advance of the desired path. The experimental results confirm the effectiveness of the adopted algorithm.