RFID BASED COLLISION-FREE ROBOT DOCKING IN CLUTTERED ENVIRONMENT

This paper proposes a radio frequency identification (RFID) based collision-free robot docking in cluttered environment. Physical distance estimation sensors are fused to the developed degree of arrival (DOA) guided robot docking system, and collision-avoidance function is implemented based on the vector field histogram technique. Additionally, new simple but efficient DOA filtering algorithm is developed based on the gain control according to the improved robot control algorithm, which enables the robot to move continuously. The experimental results show that the robot can move to target transponder even though the estimated DOA is blocked by obstacles. The success rate does not reach satisfactory level due to the limitation of the employed sensors and collision-avoidance algorithm, but it is proved that the collision-free docking becomes available without any priori map and reference stations.