Development of a Hybrid Path Planning Algorithm and a Bio-Inspired Control for an Omni-Wheel Mobile Robot

This research presents a control structure for an omni-wheel mobile robot (OWMR). The control structure includes the path planning module and the motion control module. In order to secure the robustness and fast control performance required in the operating environment of OWMR, a bio-inspired control method, brain limbic system (BLS)-based control, was applied. Based on the derived OWMR kinematic model, a motion controller was designed. Additionally, an optimal path planning module is suggested by combining the advantages of A* algorithm and the fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (FAHP). In order to verify the performance of the proposed motion control strategy and path planning algorithm, numerical simulations were conducted. Through a point-to-point movement task, circular path tracking task, and randomly moving target tracking task, it was confirmed that the suggesting motion controller is superior to the existing controllers, such as PID. In addition, A*–FAHP was applied to the OWMR to verify the performance of the proposed path planning algorithm, and it was simulated based on the static warehouse environment, dynamic warehouse environment, and autonomous ballet parking scenarios. The simulation results demonstrated that the proposed algorithm generates the optimal path in a short time without collision with stop and moving obstacles.