The Ninth International Conference on Electronic Measurement & Instruments ICEMI’2009

Navigation and Slope Detection System Design for Autonomous Mobile Robot

Boyu WeiˈJunyao GaoˈKejie LiˈHu Chen

School of Mechatronical Engineering, Beijing Institute of Technology
Beijing, Haidian, China
Email: weiboyu83@yahoo.com.cn

Abstract – Autonomous mobile robot navigation is a hot planning. Appropriate or correct and suitable algorithms
research field in recent years. We design a four-tracked will fulfill its function fast enough, that is, to find an
autonomous mobile robot with a main-controller based on optimal path for the robot to traverse in, even if there are
ARM s3c2410 and sub-controller based on ATmega128. The
a large number of obstacles cluttered in a complex
navigation system consists of GPS, INS, ultrasonic and infrared
environment [3]. To achieve this, various approaches in
sensors. The used of the GPS and inertial navigation system for
autonomous mobile robot makes its navigation precision and the design of algorithms used to develop an ideal path
performance increase greatly. A new local path planning planning system for autonomous mobile robots have
algorithm is presented, which is based on artificial potential been proposed by many researchers.
field theory. By using the infrared sensors installed in front of Autonomous mobile robots have many functions such
the robot, it can detect whether there is a slope and calculate as environment perception, data fusion, dynamic path
the angel of the slope. planning and decision making. In mobile robot
Keywords – autonomous mobile robot, GPS/INS, local path navigation algorithms, people have done a lot researches
planning algorithm, slope detection.
in known environment and structured environment. Also
there are some methods and researches for unknown
I. INTRODUCTION
environment and unstructured environment.
Mobile robot path planning can be divided into the
With the development of robotics technology, the
global path planning based on the map and the local path
application of robot has been extended more and more
planning based on the sensors. The global path planning
widely. The robot is required not only to complete some
method(when the environment condition is known) has
large-scale assemblage tasks in work, but also to achieve
made many achievement. The local path planning based
complex missions in indoor and outdoor environment.
on the sensors is one of the important techniques of
To work autonomously and continuously in real-time,
mobile robot navigation in unknown environment.
robot needs many kinds of sensors to gather environment
Mobile robots often work in unstructured environment,
information and guides itself with path planning
the environment is more complex, and exist large
algorithm [1,2].
unpredictable interference factors. We design this
Autonomous mobile robot, just as its name implies, is
autonomous mobile robot referring to the advantages and
a kind of mobile robot which does not need manual
disadvantages of the previous mobile robot. This robot
remote control and can go with full automation and
uses GPS/INS navigation method, can work in indoor
execute certain tasks.
and outdoor environment. A new local path planning
Autonomous mobile robots can be used at several
algorithm is presented, which is based on artificial
applications such as: detection of chemical gas system or
potential field theory. By using the infrared sensors
chemical mapping of toxic residue or hazard points,
installed in front of the robot, it can detect whether there
exploration at hostile environment, remote inspection at
is a slope and calculate the angel of the slope.
industry environment for detection of high temperature
and radiation, detection of bombs at war zone and
II. HARDWARE DESIGN
cleaning of nuclear reactors [3-6].
Autonomous mobile robot navigation algorithm is a
A. Autonomous mobile robot composition
hot research field in recent years. Determination of a
collision free path for a robot between start and goal The autonomous mobile robot has four tracks: two
positions through obstacles cluttered in a workspace is drive tracks and two rotation tracks. The robot is shown
central to the design of an autonomous robot path as Figure.1, camera, GPS, INS, ultrasonic sensors,
_____________________________ infrared sensors, wireless video transmitter and wireless
978-1-4244-3864-8/09/$25.00 ©2009 IEEE data transmitter are installed on the robot.

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The robot consists of central control system, Our mobile robot consists of four layers: user layer,
navigation and self-localization system, obstacle decision layer, sensor layer and execution layer. It is
detection system and motor drive system. The central shown as Fig.3:
control system mainly processes data from the sensor
acquisition system, then form instruction and send them
to the motor drive system to control motors, it also
communicates with the host computer by wireless data
transmitter. The navigation system mainly receives GPS
signal and provides direction and attitude of the robots
with inertial navigation system (INS). The main function
of obstacle detection system is to obtain and analyze the
external sensors of the autonomous mobile robot by
ATmega128, such as ultrasonic sensors, infrared sensors,
etc, then transmit the data to the central control system.
The main function of the motor drive system is to receive
instruction from the central control system, and drive the
motors of the robot. ARM9 provide three serial ports, the
rest of the serial ports is extended by SPI bus of s3c2410.
Figure.2 indicates the system structure of the
autonomous mobile robot.

Fig. 3. Four layers of the autonomous mobile robot.

B. GPS and INS

Fig. 1. Autonomous mobile robot composition. The GPS is designed to provide position, velocity, and
time estimates to users at all times, in all weather
conditions on the earth. The existing GPS signal for each
satellite consists of a spectrum spreading code and data
bits modulated onto a carrier signal. When a GPS
receiver has collected range measurements from four or
more satellites, it can calculate a navigation solution[1].
We select MTi from Xsens Technologies (Fig.5). The
MTi is a miniature, gyro-enhanced Attitude and Heading
Reference System (AHRS). Its internal low-power signal
processor provides drift-free 3D orientation as well as
calibrated 3D acceleration, 3D rate of turn (rate gyro) and
3D earth-magnetic field data. The MTi is an excellent
measurement unit for stabilization and control of
autonomous mobile robots.

C. Ultrasonic and infrared sensor

Fig. 2. System structure of the autonomous mobile robot.

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We combine the data from ultrasonic and infrared
sensors to get the environment information and detect
slope in front of the robot.
SRF02 is a ultrasonic sensor which uses a single
transducer for both transmission and reception, the
measurement range is from 15cm to 11m. The SRF02
features both I2C and a Serial interfaces. The serial
interface is a standard TTL level UART format at 9600
baud,1 start, 2 stop and no parity bits, and may be
connected directly to the serial ports on any
microcontroller. Up to 16 SRF02's may be connected
together on a single bus, either I2C or Serial. We install 9
ultrasonic sensors on the mobile robot as Fig.4.
Fig. 4.Ultrasonic sensors installation.
Infrared sensor has good directional features. We
select SHARP GP2Y0A02YK, the measurement range is
from 20cm to 150cm. We use 13 infrared sensors, each
infrared sensor is installed near by a ultrasonic sensor,
four infrared sensors are installed in the front and at the
back of the robot to detect the slope of the road (Fig.5).
Fig.5.Slope detection.
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III. PATH PLANNING OF THE AUTONOMOUS
MOBILE ROBOT
A. Software design
The robot software system takes ARM9 as its
development platform, and fully uses virtues of Linux
system. Also this software system adopts the type of
multi-process so as to separately design a management
process for the external communication devices
including GPS, INS, electric motor driver, host computer
and so on. And inter-communication of data between
processes is realized in the mode of memory share.
The software is composed of a host process and
multiple sub-processes. Host process is used to create the
shared memory, manage other processes and do the
operations of combined navigation and path planning.
Sub-process is used to control devices and process data.
B. Slope detection system design
In order to realize pre-detection of local landform, it is
adopted to use two distance measurement sensors on one
plumb line for measurement, so as to complete at one
time both distance measurement and slope conversion, as
shown in the following figure:
Fig.6. Slope detection model.
B and C are two distance measurement sensors, which
are installed on one plumb line with same pitch angle.
The terrain clearance of C is h2, and the terrain clearance
of B is h1. When the frontage is flat, the difference of the
two distances got by sonar measurement is DE, i.e. b:
b DE u cos E DE u sin D (h2  h1 )sin 2 D / cos D (1)
When the frontage is upgrade, b is shortened into a
which is the difference of two sonar distance
measurements:
a l2  l1 (2)
In which, l1 and l2 are the distances of frontal obstacles
in slope measured by upper and lower sonar respectively.
The Ninth International Conference on Electronic Measurement & Instruments
But when there is not big difference between l1 and l2,
the calculation result can have great error. In order to
reduce the error, the method of log transformation is
adopted to calculate l2 –l1. When l2 /l1 is close to 1:
l l2
ln 2 1 (3)
l1 l1
§ l2 · l2
i.e.: l2  l1
¨  1¸ u l1 l1 u ln (4)
© l1 ¹ l1
So formula for calculating the difference between
distance measurements is as follows:
a l1 u ln(l2 / l1 ) (5)
FK h1  l1 sin E , HN h2  l2 sin E
BL FM (h2  h1 ) sin E
sin J ( HN  FK ) / a 2  FM 2
Thus the angle of slope J can be determined as
follow:
(h2  l2 sin E  h1  l1 sin E )
J arcsin
a 2  (h2  h1 )sin 2 E
When robot goes on a flat and straight road, the angle
J is measured and calculated. It can be got through both
(6) and (9) that when J is more than zero, the value of
slope increases; when J is less than zero, the value of
slope reduces. According to the value of J , the swing
arm of robot is controlled, so as to make it go more stably.
And then combining with attitude of robot, which is
measured by the inertial navigation parts, the value of
slope of the next moment can be worked out.
C. Local path planning algorithm
The mode of this robot’s path planning is the method
of local path planning, the aim of which is to work out the
shortest path to reach destination under an unknown
environment. This robot works under the unknown and
complex environment to process the obstacle distance
information detected by ultrasonic sensor and infrared
sensor, and then obtain a planned path.
The obstacle-rounding method takes the whole
obstacle as calculation unit. When robot meets obstacle,
the robot will go around border of the obstacle, till round
the obstacle and arrive at the side close to goal point, and
then leave the obstacle and continue to go to the goal.
The whole obstacle should be firstly defined. What
robot detects is the point on obstacle surface, so obstacle
can be defined as a robot-detected point aggregate which
meets the followings:
(1) The distance between certain two points in the
aggregate should be less than safe pass distance of robot;
ICEMI’2009
(2) The distance between any point in this aggregate
and any point without this aggregate should be more than
safe pass distance of robot.
And then robot’s path planning type, i.e. moving path,
is designed. Robot is imagined as a ball whose size
includes robot’s safe scope. This ball moves to goal
under goal’s gravitational interaction. When meeting
obstacle, robot will round the obstacle with certain mode.
When the robot arrives at the side of obstacle, which is
close to goal point, the robot will leave the obstacle, and
continue to move toward goal.
In order to ensure robot to correctly plan its path,
(6) robot’s motion mode should be under 4 rules as follows:
(1) Cannot return during moving, which should be the
(7) most basic rule for robot motion. Under limitation of this
(8) rule, robot can be prevented from moving to and fro at
some position. This rule can solve the problem of the
minimum value of local potential field in artificial
potential field method, and ensure goal of robot.
(9) (2) Cannot knock against obstacle, that is keep certain
safe distance to obstacle. The task of path planning
algorithm is to ensure robot can arrive at goal place under
precondition that is robot does not knock against
obstacle.
(3) Robot goes towards goal when it does not meet
obstacle.
(4) When robot meets obstacle, it goes along surface
of obstacle. That is robot keeps certain distance to
obstacle surface, which is somewhat more than safe
distance and can be taken as safe distance when
calculating, till robot arrives at the side of obstacle,
which is close to goal point, and then leaves obstacle and
goes towards goal.
The following Figure 7 and 8 show the found path
examples with this path planning algorithm:
Fig. 7. Path planning in normal environment.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENT

The authors would like to thank the School of

Mechatronical Engineering of Beijing Institute of
Technology for the supports. The corresponding author
is Dr. Junyao Gao.

REFERENCES

Fig. 8. Path planning when minimum point exists.
Along with development of robot, both time and space
sampling density can be raised to a certain extent. For
example, as shown in the following Figure 9, robot can
continuously scan concrete status of obstacle border, and
then produces a virtual border, depending on which, the
planned path will be the shortest.
Fig. 9 Virtual border path planning
[1] Andrew Shacklock, Jian Xu, Han Wang, “Visual Guidance for
Autonomous Vehicles: Capability and Challenges”. Autonomous
Mobile Robots[M],pp.5-40,2006.
[2] Boyu Wei, Junyao Gao, Kejie Li, “Indoor Mobile Robot Obstacle
Detection Based on Linear Structured Light Vision System”.
International Conference on Robotics and Biomimetics[C],
pp.834-839,2009.
[3] N.Sariff and N.Buniyamin, “An Overview of Autonomous
Mobile Robot Path Planning Algorithms”. 4th Student Conference
on Research and Development (Scored 2006)[C], pp.
183-188,2006
[4] Ambrose, R., Askew, R. S. “An Experimental Investigation of
Actuators for Space Robots “. IEEE International Conference on
Robotics and Automation[C], p. 2625 - 2630, 1995.
[5] Hayes, A. T., Martinoli, A. and Goodman, R. M “Distributed
Odor Source Localization”. IEEE Sensors Journal[J], Vol. 2, No.
3, June, 2002.
[6] Monkman, G. J. and Taylor, R. D. “Thermal Tactile Sensing”
IEEE Transactions on Robotics and Automation[J], Vol. 9, No. 3,
June,1993.

IV. CONCLUSION

Autonomous mobile robot, just as its name implies, is

a kind of mobile robot which does not need manual
remote control and can go with full automation and
execute certain tasks. In study and design of robot, we
absorb predecessor’s experience on robot design, and
take the shortcomings of existing robot into account, we
design an autonomous mobile robot which consists of
many sensors such as GPS, INS, camera, ultrasonic and
infrared sensors. The robot consists of central control
system, navigation and self-localization system, obstacle
detection system and motor drive system. The robot
system is mainly divided into user layer,
decision-making layer, sensing/bottom decision-making
layer (action layer), and execution control layer. This
robot uses GPS/INS combined navigation and basing on
the artificial potential field method, the
obstacle-rounding path planning algorithm is presented.

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