Analysis and experiment of robot navigation by sound field using interaction with obstacles

This study focuses on autonomous robot navigation. In general, robot controllers are designed based on an accurate model of the environment. In contrast to this, we adopted an approach where information is written into the environment and used to operate the robot controller. This method can reduce the computational complexity and energy cost and has the advantage of expanding the system to consider multiple robots. However, the mechanism by which information is to be written into an environment in order to operate the robot in a real space with obstacles or walls has not yet been clarified. Thus, in this study, we adopted acoustic devices in the design to consider situations where robot controllers must interact with obstacles. First, we examined the acoustic field created by interactions between sound waves and obstacles using the finite-difference time-domain method and verified it in the real world. Then, we apply the designed acoustic field to an robot controller. The experimental results demonstrated successful robot navigation. The results also show that complicated sensor systems for the robot are not required to be designed to capture obstacles in working places. At the same time, our approach enable autonomous navigation even when the robot cannot visually recognize the target position.