Intelligent Detection of Bumps in a Mobile Robot

A mobile robot is easy to be collided in a dynamic environment, and will also be knocked by people as a means of communication to send a command, so it is necessary for the robot to detect the bump information correctly and make a reasonable response. A 2-D (two-dimensional) accelerometer is fixed in a differential drive wheeled mobile robot to feel the occurrence of bump by picking up vibration signals in this paper. The bump angle and force can be evaluated by analysis of the serial vibration force. Since the running of robot and the slope on ground will also caused acceleration signals a way to recognize bump is also discussed. Because of the bumping angle judged by this method is not very accurate, a reasonable responding policy is also provided. The experiments show that the robot can effectively detect bump in a reasonable error range.