Sensor-based distributed control scheme for mobile robots

In this paper we present a sensor-based distributed control scheme for mobile robots. This scheme combines centralized and decentralized control strategies. A server-client model is used to implement this scheme where the server is a process that caries out the commands to be executed, and each client is a process with a certain task. The clients are running in parallel issuing commands to the server which selects the command to be executed based on a predefined priority scheme. In this scheme, a collision avoidance client is running all the time with the highest priority. This improves the performance of the other clients since it removes the burden of avoiding obstacles and allows each client to concentrate on performing its task. Some aspects of tolerance analysis are investigated and incorporated in the proposed scheme. The logical sensor approach is used to model the sensory system which provides different levels of data representation with tolerance measures and analysis. The simulation results of this model are presented with a brief discussion and conclusion on these results.