2019 IEEE International Conference on Automatic Control and Intelligent Systems (I2CACIS 2019), 29 June 2019, Selangor, Malaysia
Fuzzy Logic Control of Goal-Seeking 2-Wheel
Differential Mobile Robot Using Unicycle Approach
Lukuman Abolore Yekinni
Sheik Bashir School, Tal-Udu
Kano City, Nigeria
Email: mallamluku@yahoo.com
Abstract — In this work, fuzzy logic-based navigation control
for a 2-wheel mobile robot is proposed. An autonomous mobile
robot must be able to move safely in an environment, to reach
its target (or goal). The work began with the mathematical
model of the robot that involved the kinematic model. After
which the Simulink model was developed and then fuzzy logic
controller was designed for goal seeking. The problem with the
differential drive model is that separate fuzzy rules need to be
developed for both left and right wheels of the robot and the
steering angle cannot be controlled directly from the fuzzy
rules. However, these limitations have been taken care of in
this work. The linear velocity and steering angle of the mobile
robot were directly controlled from a single set of fuzzy rules
and this has helped to reduce the time of navigation of the
robot. The performance was satisfactory and the results of the
simulation showed that the robot could reach its goal during
navigation in shorter time than if differential drive model alone
was used.
Keywords: Fuzzy Logic Control, Goal Seeking Controller,
Unicycle Model, Differential Wheel model, Robot Navigation
I. INTRODUCTION
Mobile robots may be categorized as Automated
Guided Vehicles (AGVs) or Autonomous Mobile Robots
(AMRs). The AGVs move around with the map of the
environment in their memories, thus have limited flexibility
and applications. The AMRs on the other hand, navigate
without any prior description of the environment in their
memories but rely solely on information from sensors and
control algorithm to achieve their tasks. These types are
more flexible than AGVs and could adapt to different
environments.
However, a mobile robot that carries out navigation
tasks in an uncertain environment needs some level of
intelligence to figure out its relationship with the
environment in order to compute the best path between its
current position and the intended target or goal position [1].
Therefore, it is very important to incorporate intelligence
into an autonomous mobile robot so as to have a good
control and ability to adapt to changing environment and
demands. This intelligence is usually incorporated via
artificial intelligence methodologies such as neural network
[2], fuzzy logic [3, 4, 5, 6, 7] or several other metaheuristic
methods [8, 9, 10, 11]. Kashyep and Pandey [12] gave a
good review of these methodologies as applied in wheeled
robot motion planning. Some researchers even consider the
mobile robot navigation problem using hybrid methods [3,
13, 14]. In their review, Radzak et al [15] categorize the
control methodologies used for mobile robot control.
Researchers continue to work, especially in fuzzy logic
The authors wish to thank Bayero University, Kano for sponsoring the
trip to present this work during the I2CACIS 2019 (IEEE) Conference at
Shah Alam, Malaysia, 29th June 2019.
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Ado Dan-Isa
Dept. of Electrical Engineering
Bayero University, Kano, Nigeria
Email: danisa@buk.edu.ng
area, to improve wheeled mobile robot capabilities. For
example, in reference [16] the authors designed a controller
to control the robot motion along a predefined path using
fuzzy logic. A total of 18 fuzzy rules were formulated, nine
for each of the two (right and left) wheels of the robot. The
researchers in [4] designed a new MIMO fuzzy logic
controller for tracking trajectory and navigation behavior of
a mobile robot. This seems to be the general pattern of
fuzzy control of 2-wheel mobile robots. Rules are generated
on the basis of sensory inputs. These are then used to
control each of the two wheels separately [5-7, 17, 18, 19,
20, 21]. Separate fuzzy rules are made for each wheel. No
doubt other variants of this scheme exist whereby other
mechanisms are added to effect the fuzzy control. For
example Akka and Khaber [22] designed an optimal
tracking controller to make a wheeled mobile robot to track
a planned trajectory. The design is based on Dynamic
Window Approach (DWA), where the weights of the
objective function are dynamically adjusted using fuzzy
logic controller. For the tracking control, a discrete linear
quadratic tracker (LQT) was used by the authors. The work
in [23] was based on designing type-2 fuzzy self-tuning
PID controller to improve the autonomous driving action of
a mobile robot. Although all cited works have been
successful, the two wheels of the robot are controlled
separately, sometimes even with different set of rules. It
would seem more intuitive to use a single set of rules to
control the robot's motion in space.
This paper is organized as follows: In the second
section of this paper, the mobile robot is described.
Equations of the kinematics of the robot are given and the
design of the goal-seeking fuzzy logic controller is
discussed. The performance of the proposed approach is
demonstrated and discussed in section three. The
conclusion is given in section four.
II. METHODOLOGY
A. Mobile Robot Model
The mobile robot considered in this paper is a 2-wheel
non-holonomic robot with a third caster wheel to provide
stability. The sketch of the robot is shown in Fig.1. It has
two independent driving wheels arranged parallel to each
other. Each of the two wheels is driven independently by a
DC motor. Thus this mechanism is able to drive the robot
forward and backward as well as steer its heading angle by
differentiating the linear velocity of the right wheel (Vr) and
linear velocity of the left wheel (Vl). Even though this
configuration requires complex control strategy than the
steer drive configuration, it is still often the first choice for
most researchers in this area. This could be due to two
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 2019 IEEE International Conference on Automatic Control and Intelligent Systems (I2CACIS 2019), 29 June 2019, Selangor, Malaysia

reasons. Firstly, the two-wheel drive strategy has the
capability of making a small radius turning, even making a
turning on a spot. Secondly, most experimental wheeled
mobile robots for laboratory use are built with this
configuration. The sketch of the two-wheeled robot is
shown in Fig. 1.
However, for intuitive control, the robot’s translational
velocity (V) and angular speed (ω) should be the design
outputs. With these we can actually feel what the robot is
doing. As shown by LaValle [24], the kinematics of a
unicycle robot can simulate that of a differential one. This
fact can be exploited to design the fuzzy logic controller for
a differential wheel robot on the basis of a simple unicycle
model given below.
x = V cos(φ )
y = V sin(φ ) (2)
φ = ω

The robot’s angular velocity ω is simply the time rate of

change of its orientation.
Note that the robot’s velocity is the average of the
velocities Vr and Vl. Also the angular speed of the robot is
related to Vr and Vl and the distance between the two wheels
[24] as follows:
Fig. 1. Two-Wheeled Robot 1
V = (Vr + Vl )
2 (3)
The quantities in Fig.1 are described in Table I below. 1
ω = (Vr − Vl )
L
TABLE I. PARAMETERS OF THE ROBOT MODEL

Quantity Description Solving these two equations simultaneously gives the

Vr Linear velocity of the right wheel required differential wheel velocities as
Vl Linear velocity of the left wheel 2V + ωL
L Distance between the two wheels Vr =
2 (4)
ω Angular velocity of the whole robot 2V − ωL
V Linear velocity of the whole robot Vl =
φ Robot’s orientation with respect to x-axis 2
r Radius of the wheel
The fuzzy controller in this work is designed based on the
unicycle model in (2) because of its simplicity and intuitive
B. Equations Defining the Robot’s Kinematics appeal even though the robot itself is a differential drive
The first stage in the kinematic modeling of a robot is system. The controller produces V and φ as outputs. The
to express constraints on the motion of the individual wheel. required control inputs to the robot, namely Vr and Vl, are
The constraints enforce the concept of no lateral movement, computed from (4), noting that ω = dφ/dt, as given in (2).
that the wheels have pure rolling and non-slippage condition
during the motion in the wheel plane. The control inputs are C. Goal-Seeking Controller Design
the rate at which the right wheel is moving and the rate at
which the left wheel is moving, that means Vr and Vl The task of the robot is to reach a desired destination
respectively. But actually we care about the robot’s position in any environment. The goal seeking behavior is expected
(x, y) on a plane and its orientation/steering angle (φ). These to align the robot’s heading with the direction of the goal
parameters indicate where the robot is and in what direction coordinates. In order to achieve this, linguistic variables and
it is moving. Therefore, a robot model is that which relates values are designed for both the inputs and the outputs of
the controller. The linguistic variables for the goal seeking
Vr and Vl to the state of the robot (x, y, φ). Under the stated
constraints the kinematics equations of the differential drive behavior are the error angle (φe) (the angle between the
robot in the world frame are as follows [16, 24]. robot and the goal) and goal distance, Dg (the distance from
the robot to the goal). These variables serve as inputs to the
r controller. For the outputs of the controller, the linguistic
x = (Vr + Vl ) cos(φ )
2 variables are the robot's steering angle (φ) and velocity (V).
r The linguistic values for the input “Error Angle” are LB,
y = (Vr + Vl ) sin(φ ) (1) LS, N, RS, RB while the linguistic values for the input
2
r “Goal Distance” are VF, F, M, C, VC. Similarly, the
φ = (Vr − Vl ) linguistic values for the output “Steering Angle” are LB, LS,
L NT, RS, RB while for the output “Velocity” are AF, A, M,
D, DF. These are summarized in Table II.
This model gives what is required to map the control
inputs (Vr and Vl) into the state of the robot (x, y, φ).

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 2019 IEEE International Conference on Automatic Control and Intelligent Systems (I2CACIS 2019), 29 June 2019, Selangor, Malaysia

TABLE II. SUMMARY OF LINGUISTIC VALUES fuzzify the variables, see Fig. 2. The parameters defining the
Input Variables triangular MFs for both the inputs and outputs are listed in
Error Angle, φe (rad.) Goal Distance, Dg (m) Table III. Mamdani fuzzy inference method was used to
Left Big (LB) Very Far (VF) infer fuzzy outputs from the rules listed in Table IV. The
Left Small (LS) Far (F) crisp controller outputs were produced from the inferred
Normal (N) Medium (M)
Right Small (RS) Close (C)
fuzzy outputs using centre of gravity (also called centroid or
Right Big (RB) Very Close (VC) centre of mass) defuzzification method.
Output Variables
Steering Angle, φ (˚) Robot’s Velocity, V (m/s)
Left Big (LB) Accelerate Fast (AF)
Left Small (LS) Accelerate (A)
No Turn (NT) Maintain (M)
Right Small (RS) Decelerate (D)
Right Big (RB) Decelerate Fast (DF)

Fuzzy logic control system design consists of three

main stages: fuzzification, inference, defuzzification. In this Fig. 2. Triangular Membership Function
work triangular membership functions (MFs) were used to

TABLE III. TRIANGULAR MEMBERSHIP FUNCTIONS PARAMETERS

Error Angle (φe) LB LS N RS RB
(radians) [-3 -2 -1] [-2 -1 0] [-1 0 1] [0 1 2] [1 2 3]

Goal Distance Dg VC C M F VF
(meters) [0 0 2] [0 2 4] [2 4 6] [4 6 8] [6 8 10]

Steering Angle (φ) LB LS NT RS RB

(degrees) [-3 -2 -1] [-2 -1 0] [-1 0 1] [0 1 2] [1 2 3]

Robot’s Velocity(V) AF A M D DF
(m/s) [2 2.5 3] [1.5 2 2.5] [1 1.5 2] [0.5 1 1.5] [0 0.5 1]

Fig. 3. Simulink Block Model for Goal Seeking Controller

TABLE IV. GOAL-SEEKING CONTROLLER RULES III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

LB LS N RS RB The Simulink block model of the differential drive
mobile robot used in this work for goal seeking behavior is
VF φ LB LS NT RS RB shown in Fig. 3 and the simulation is carried out in Matlab
environment. When the simulation was run, the mobile
V AF AF AF AF AF robot moved along straight line and was able to reach the
F φ LB LS NT RS RB goal point.
Many researchers use fuzzy logic rules to control
V AF AF AF AF AF differential drive robot, where the left and right wheels are
controlled separately. This is called the differential wheel
M φ LB LS NT RS RB approach. In this work a new approach was proposed,
V M M M A A whereby a unicycle wheel dynamics is used to simulate
differential wheel dynamics. As a result, the linear velocity
C φ LB LS NT RS RB and the orientation of the robot can be controlled directly
V D D D D D using a single set of fuzzy rules. For the purpose of
comparison simulations were carried out using the
VC φ LB LS NT RS RB differential wheel approach as proposed by Mac et al [4]
V DF DF DF DF DF and the unicycle-based approach proposed in this work. The

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 2019 IEEE International Conference on Automatic Control and Intelligent Systems (I2CACIS 2019), 29 June 2019, Selangor, Malaysia

paths taken by the robot to reach its target are shown in Fig. Velocity for Goal Point (8,6)
4 through to Fig. 6. 2
Unicycle Model
1.8 Differential Model
Goal Point (9,7)
8
Unicycle Model 1.6
Differential Model
7 1.4

Velocity (m/s)
1.2
6
1

5 0.8
Y (m)

0.6
4
0.4
3
0.2

2 0
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16
Time (s)
1
Fig. 5b. Velocities of the two approaches when goal point = (8, 6)
0
0 2 4 6 8 10
X (m)
Fig. 4a. Outputs of the two approaches when goal point = (9,7) Goal Point (7,6)
6
Unicycle Model
Differential Model
Velocity for Goal Point (9,7) 5
2
Unicycle Model
1.8 Differential Model
4
1.6
Y (m )

1.4 3
Velocity (m/s)

1.2

2
1

0.8
1
0.6

0.4
0
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
0.2
X (m)
0 Fig. 6a. Outputs of the two approaches when goal point = (7,6)
0 5 10 15 20
Time (s)
Velocity for Goal Point (7,6)
Fig. 4b. Velocities of the two approaches when goal point = (9,7) 2
Unicycle Model
1.8 Differential Model

Goal Point (8,6) 1.6

7
Unicycle Model
Differential Model 1.4
6
V e lo c ity (m /s )

1.2

5 1

4
0.8
Y (m )

0.6
3
0.4

2 0.2

1 0
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14
Time (s)
0
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Fig. 6b. Velocities of the two approaches when goal point = (7,6)
X (m)
Fig. 5a. Outputs of the two approaches when goal point = (8, 6)

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 2019 IEEE International Conference on Automatic Control and Intelligent Systems (I2CACIS 2019), 29 June 2019, Selangor, Malaysia
Fig. 4a shows the path followed by the robot using the
differential wheel and the unicycle approaches. In each case,
the robot was able to reach the goal point, though at
different times. From the graphs, it can be seen that, for both
the differential wheel and unicycle approaches, the robot did
not move toward the goal located at coordinate (9,7) directly
from the beginning but first moved along the x-axis for few
seconds before moving toward the goal point. It took the
differential wheel a little more time before it could align its
heading toward this goal which resulted in delay in its
navigation. On the other hand, from the velocity-time graph
in Fig. 4b, the unicycle model started with a high velocity.
This speed was maintained for a short time after which the
acceleration decreases till the robot reached its goal in 9s.
But for the differential wheel model, the robot started with
low velocity of about 0.5m/s, maintained the speed for about
3s before accelerating uniformly, building up its velocity
slowly to its maximum value of almost 1m/s. After that the
speed gradually decreased as the robot reached the goal
point in 18s. As shown in Fig. 5 and Fig. 6, the
performances were similar even when the goal coordinate is
changed. The results are summarized in Table V below.
TABLE V. COMPARISON OF THE TWO APPROACHES
Goal Point Co- Time to Reach Goal Point
ordinate (x, y) in
meters Differential Unicycle
Drive Model Drive Model
(9, 7) 18s 9s
(8, 6) 16s 8s
(7, 6) 14s 7.9s
IV. CONCLUSION
We have demonstrated in this work that unicycle
kinematic model can be used to represent the kinematic
model of a 2-wheel differential drive robot. Fuzzy logic-
based controller was designed on the basis of the unicycle
model and was made to successfully control the differential
drive robot. We were able to control the linear velocity of
the robot directly using a single set of fuzzy rules without
designing separate rules for the right and left wheels of the
robot as was done in majority of the cited literature. This has
the result of reducing the time of navigation of the mobile
robot. In addition to the speed control, the robot is also
made to look as if it were steer-driven. This is achieved by
directly controlling the steering angle of the robot from the
fuzzy rules rather than by controlling the angular velocities
of the wheels as is the case in differential wheel drive.
Comparing the two approaches, it was observed that the
unicycle approach is more efficient than the differential
wheel approach in terms of reaching the goal quicker.
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