An Environment Recognition System Using SOM

Abstract

Recently, various mechanisms have been developed combining linkage mechanisms and wheels. Especially passive linkage mechanisms and small wheel type robots are proposed, because a wheel type mobile mechanism has difficulty on the rough terrain movement. In our research, a 6-wheeled mobile robot employing the linkage mechanism has been developed to enhance maneuverability, and achieved climbing over a 0.20[m] height of bump. In this paper, we propose a switching controller system for wheel type mobile robot on rough terrain environment. This system consists of two sub systems. One is the environment recognition system using self-organizing map. The other one is the adjusted controllers using neural networks.