Obstacle Avoidance System of Substation Inspection Robot Based on the Dual-mode Controller of Bumpless Switching

Abstract

The design of obstacle avoidance system for substation inspection robot is widely known as a challenging task. This paper addresses this issue by exploiting a novel approach to combine the fuzzy logic control and fuzzy PID control into the controller design with bumpless switching between these two control modes. Such dual-mode design approach can significantly promote the real-time performance of the obstacle avoidance system and effectively eliminate the blind spots and enables the system to reach the equilibrium points faster. The moving velocity and rotation angle of robots are proactively controlled via the fuzzy-PID dual-mode controller to avoid obstacles with graceful path and velocity changes. The suggested design approach is evaluated through a set of simulation experiments for realistic scenarios. The numerical results have demonstrated its effectiveness which can be adopted in the practical deployment.