A wall following robot with a fuzzy logic controller optimized by a genetic algorithm

A wall following mobile robot equipped with ultrasonic sensors is presented. This robot uses a fuzzy logic controller and local navigation strategy. The basis for reactive navigation is provided by the concept of general perception which passes perceptual information of the sensors on to the fuzzy system without modeling walls or obstacles. Thus, no representation of the environment is needed. The rule base of the fuzzy system was designed by hand and then a genetic algorithm applied to find optimum membership functions so that the robot moves at constant distance to the wall, at high speed and as smoothly as possible. Optimization was done using a simulated robot. The results of this simulation proved satisfactorily close to reality when tested in a real robot