Abstract
Robotic Navigation Aids (RNAs) assist visually impaired individuals in independent navigation. However, existing research overlooks diverse obstacles and assumes equal responsibility for collision avoidance among intelligent entities. To address this, we propose Fuzzy Logic Controller-Optimal Reciprocal Collision Avoidance (FLC-ORCA). Our FLC-ORCA method assigns responsibility for collision avoidance and predicts the velocity of obstacles using a LiDAR-based mobile robot. We conduct experiments in the presence of static, dynamic, and intelligent entities, recording navigation paths, time taken, angle changes, and rerouting occurrences. The results demonstrate that the proposed FLC-ORCA successfully avoids collisions among objects with different collision avoidance protocols and varying liabilities in circumventing obstacles. Comparative analysis reveals that FLC-ORCA outperforms other state-of-the-art methods such as Improved A* and Directional Optimal Reciprocal Collision Avoidance (DORCA). It reduces the overall time taken to complete navigation by 16% and achieves the shortest completion time of 1 min and 38 s, with minimal rerouting (1 occurrence) and the smallest angle change (12°). Our proposed FLC-ORCA challenges assumptions of equal responsibility and enables collision avoidance without pairwise manoeuvres. This approach significantly enhances obstacle avoidance, ensuring safer and more efficient robotic navigation for visually impaired individuals.
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The recorded data regarding the hardware experimentation are available in Zenodo, with the identifier http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5786618. While SLAM video recording of the robotic navigation can be accessed in the IEEE Dataport repository http://ieee-dataport.org/9441. Finally, the results of software simulation which supports our research findings are deposited in the IEEE Dataport repository http://ieee-dataport.org/9442.
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Acknowledgements
This research is supported by the IRAGS 2018 Grant: IRAGS18-014-0015 awarded by the International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM).
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Appendices
Appendix 1: Range and equation of membership function
Table
11 shows the input of position, velocity and acceleration of the FLC 1 with the given output of avoidance responsibility. The range of the obstacle’s distance is (0 < x ≤ 40 m), whereas the range of velocity is (0 < v ≤ 200 m/s) and acceleration is (\(-100 \mathrm{m}/{\mathrm{s}}^{2}<a\le 100 \mathrm{m}/{\mathrm{s}}^{2}\)).
The range and equations of each membership function of FLC 2 are described in Table
12. Within the table, the inputs of FLC 2 are shown to be the velocity, density and acceleration. The range of the velocity is (0 < v ≤ 200 m/s), density is (0 object/\({m}^{2}\) < ρ \(\le\) 8 objects/\({\mathrm{m}}^{2}\)), and acceleration is (\(-100 \mathrm{m}/{\mathrm{s}}^{2}<a\le 100 \mathrm{m}/{\mathrm{s}}^{2}\)).
Appendix 2: Input variables
Table
13 shows the input variable of FLC 1. All possible combinations of antecedents and the corresponding consequents result in 48 total rules enumerated.
For the FLC 2, calculating all possible combinations assemble 36 rules in total. Table
14 shows the input variable of FLC 2.
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Mohd Romlay, M.R., Mohd Ibrahim, A., Toha, S.F. et al. Obstacle avoidance for a robotic navigation aid using Fuzzy Logic Controller-Optimal Reciprocal Collision Avoidance (FLC-ORCA). Neural Comput & Applic 35, 22405–22429 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00521-023-08856-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00521-023-08856-8