"Validation of a Distributed Field Robot Architecture Integrated with a MATLAB Based Control Theoretic Environment: A Case Study of Fuzzy Logic Based Robot Navigation", K. P. Valavanis, A. L. Nelson, L. Doitsidis, M. Long, R. R. Murphy also submitted to IEEE Robotics & Automation magazine. [pdf]

The paper presents fundamental aspects of a multi layer, hybrid, deliberative and reactive Distributed Field Robot Architecture (DFRA) that has been designed to support functionality of heterogeneous teams of unmanned (ground and aerial) robot vehicles. The DFRA is implemented in Java using Jini to manage distributed objects, services and modules between robots and other system components. It is interfaced with a control theoretic MATLAB environment, which is supported and integrated into the Java based framework using the JMatLink Java class library. This allows modules and services implemented as native interpreted MATLAB code to be accessed as remote and distributed objects. The combination of the Java based distributed architecture and the use of MATLAB in its interpreted form for autonomous robot navigation and control is a unique aspect of the reported research.

Experimental validation of the DFRA and its MATLAB integration is demonstrated by implementing simple prototype support modules for robot navigation. These modules include: i) a time-history laser filter module; ii) a heuristic GPS-based pose detection module; iii) fuzzy logic controllers that utilize laser, GPS and odometer data as inputs. Navigation experiments in the field utilize single and multiple robots and included scenarios in which a single robot navigated through an environment with many unknown obstacles to reach a distant goal location, and scenarios in which robots executed search routines by traveling through sets of way points. Robots negotiated both static obstacles and dynamic obstacles including other robots.