Developing an efficient mobile robot control algorithm in the Webots simulation environment

Autonomous robots are getting more and more importance with the introduction of the first home robots. It´s necessary to implement efficient control algorithms to make them navigate well in both indoor and outdoor environments. The main contribution of this paper is to present an approach for mobile robot control which can be a basis for another step in the development of intelligent autonomous robots. The robot control algorithm is being developed under the Webots professional simulation environment. Two general approaches for robot navigation are also presented: the model-based, which uses complete model of the environment to navigate efficiently, and the behavior-based approach, which uses no or only sparse modeling of the environment for the navigation. The paper consists of five sections. In the first section, an introduction is presented. The second section introduces the webots simulation environment, the ALife contest and some features of the robot controller algorithm. In the third section, the principal problems of navigation are discussed and control scheme for navigation is presented. The fourth and fifth section contains the conclusion and the plans for the future.