In order for a mobile robot to move in unknown or uncertain environment, it must have an environmental information. In collecting environmental information, the mobile robot can use various sensors.
In case of using ultrasonic sensors to collect an environmental information, it is able to comprise a low-cost environmental recognition system compared with using other sensors such as vision and laser range-finder.
This paper proposes a map building algorithm which can collect environmental information using ultrasonic sensors. And also this paper suggests a traveling algorithm using environmental information which leads to the map building algorithm and the A* algorithm. In order to accomplish the proposed traveling algorithm, this paper additionally discusses a position revision algorithm and a path amendment algorithm.
For the purpose of verifying the proposed algorithms, several simulations and experiments are executed based on a UI-based simulation program and a mobile robot physically designed in this paper.
The conclusion is that the proposed algorithm is very effective and is applicable to mobile robots especially requiring a low-cost environmental information.