Collision Avoidance by the Fusion of Different Beam-width Ultrasonic Sensors

So far, mobile robot equipped with multiple ultrasonic sensors with fixed beam-width has been used in robot navigation. In this paper, we used multiple ultrasonic sensors with different beam-widths in mobile robot navigation. The use of ultrasonic sensor with small beam-width gives good resolution in recognizing environmental condition and we need more sensors to detect obstacles in wide angular region. However, if we use wide beam-width ultrasonic sensors, we can detect surrounding obstacles with a few sensors. By fusing the aspects of ultrasonic sensors with different beam-widths, we can obtain more efficient collision avoidance behavior in robot control. We stacked three kinds of ultrasonic sensors and get distance information from each sensor. Small beam-width sensor can detect environment with high resolution and large beam-width sensor gives information on possible obstacles in robot motion. Using the approach, the robot can navigate through a complex environment.