Sensors (Nov 2023)

A Versatile Approach to Polygonal Object Avoidance in Indoor Environments with Hardware Schemes Using an FPGA-Based Multi-Robot

  • Mudasar Basha,
  • Munuswamy Siva Kumar,
  • Mangali Chinna Chinnaiah,
  • Siew-Kei Lam,
  • Thambipillai Srikanthan,
  • Narambhatla Janardhan,
  • Dodde Hari Krishna,
  • Sanjay Dubey

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3390/s23239480
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 23, no. 23
p. 9480

Abstract

Read online

Service robots perform versatile functions in indoor environments. This study focuses on obstacle avoidance using flock-type indoor-based multi-robots. Each robot was developed with rendezvous behavior and distributed intelligence to perform obstacle avoidance. The hardware scheme-based obstacle-avoidance algorithm was developed using a bio-inspired flock approach, which was developed with three stages. Initially, the algorithm estimates polygonal obstacles and their orientations. The second stage involves performing avoidance at different orientations of obstacles using a heuristic based Bug2 algorithm. The final stage involves performing a flock rendezvous with distributed approaches and linear movements using a behavioral control mechanism. VLSI architectures were developed for multi-robot obstacle avoidance algorithms and were coded using Verilog HDL. The novel design of this article integrates the multi-robot’s obstacle approaches with behavioral control and hardware scheme-based partial reconfiguration (PR) flow. The experiments were validated using FPGA-based multi-robots.

Keywords