Mobile robots undergo a collision-free autonomous motion by using the information obtained from a suitable combination of\nmultiple sensors of same or different families. These sensors are often configured around the chassis of the robotic platform.\nHowever, little to no information is available as to how these sensors are configured on mobile robotic platforms and how many\nof these sensors to place on such platforms. Instead, an empirical approach is adopted. That is, the number of sensors of the same\nfamily or any type as well as combination of sensors for detecting obstacles is determined by experiment or information obtained\nfrom external sensors. This approach is often seen to be iterative and time consuming. In this paper, an approach for determining\nthe minimum number of sensors and their spacing on the robotic platformis proposed so that mobile robots undergo collision-free\nmotion.The effectiveness of the developed approach is experimentally tested by examining the obstacle avoidance capability of the\ntriomnidirectional wheeled robotic platform based on a motion triggering signal obtained from a skirt of ultrasonic sensors only.\nIt was observed that the newly developed approach allows this robotic platform to avoid obstacles effectively.
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