A Cascading Fuzzy Logic Controller to the Mars Surveyor Competition
Andrew Stubblebine, Stephen Higgins, Tejas Deshpande, Elad H. Kivelevitch · 2015
The Mars Surveyor Challenge was introduced by MathWorks as a way to challenge the community of algorithm developers by asking them to come up with a solution to explore a set of given maps using five vehicles, called rovers. The challenge at hand is to find an optimal strategy using MATLAB to explore as much of a map as possible in a limited number of instructions, or ‘moves.’ This strategy can be used in designing search algorithms for UAVs or other surveillance vehicles in order to perform searches more efficiently. Multiple types of algorithms were studied in order to find their effect on the solution, with the goal of developing algorithms that scale well for larger maps and more rovers. In this work, we present a Cascading Fuzzy Logic Controller to come up with rules that govern the motion of each individual rover. Simulation results show that our algorithm is highly competitive compared to the competition winners and is scalable both in terms of map coverage and runtime required for the calculations.