An effective search and navigation model to an auto-recharging station of driverless vehicles

Abstract

An electric vehicle auto-recharging station is a component in an infrastructure supplying electric energy for the recharging of plug-in electric vehicles. An auto-recharging station is usually accessible to an autonomous driverless vehicle driven by intelligent algorithms. A driverless vehicle is assumed to be capable of autonomously searching and navigating it into a recharging station. In this paper, a novel hybrid intelligent system is developed to navigate an autonomous vehicle into a recharging station. The driverless vehicle driven by D*Lite path planning methodology in conjunction with a Vector Field Histogram (VFH) local navigator is developed for search and navigation purpose to reach an auto-recharging station with obstacle avoidance. Once it approaches vicinity of the recharging station, the driverless vehicle should be directed at the recharging station at a proper angle, which is accomplished by a Takagi-Sugeno fuzzy logic model. A novel error control of angle and distance heuristic approach is proposed to adjust the vehicle straight at the recharging station. Development of the driverless vehicle in terms of hardware and software design is described. Simulation studies on the Player/Stage platform demonstrate that the proposed model can successfully guide an autonomous driverless vehicle into the recharging station. Experimental effort shows its promising results that the driverless vehicle is able to autonomously navigate it to an auto-recharging station.