Obstacle Avoidance Algorithm for Small Autonomous Mobile Robot Equipped with Ultrasonic Sensors

Detection and avoiding obstacles in real time is an important design requirement for any autonomous mobile platforms. In this paper we propose a new algorithm for real time obstacle avoidance. To improve the localization of a small autonomous mobile robot equipped with a microcontroller and four ultrasonic sensors, a linear recursive Kalman filter was used. The application of the Kalman filter enables the robot to avoid additional obstacles when transferring data from the sensor, adaptively adjust the intensity of noise, which ensures a smoother movement of the robot. Simulation results show that the developed approach enables to obtain the adequate realtime localization and demonstrate the efficiency in obstacle avoidance with resulting RMSE of 4.15 s and 0.07 m.