  A two-wheeled mobile robot, namely Kian-I, is designed and prototyped in this
research. The Kian-I is comparable with Khepera-IV in terms of dimensional
specifications, mounted sensors, and performance capabilities and can be used
for educational purposes and cost-effective experimental tests. A motion
control architecture is designed for Kian-I in this study to facilitate
accurate navigation for the robot in an immersive environment. The implemented
control structure consists of two main components of the path recommender
system and trajectory tracking controller. Given partial knowledge about the
operation field, the path recommender system adopts B-spline curves and
Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm to determine a collision-free path
curve with translational velocity constraint. The provided optimal reference
path feeds into the trajectory tracking controller enabling Kian-I to navigate
autonomously in the operating field. The trajectory tracking module eliminate
the error between the desired path and the followed trajectory through
controlling the wheels' velocity. To assess the feasibility of the proposed
control architecture, the performance of Kian-I robot in autonomous navigation
from any arbitrary initial pose to a target of interest is evaluated through
numerous simulation and experimental studies. The experimental results
demonstrate the functional capacities and performance of the prototyped robot
to be used as a benchmark for investigation and verification of various mobile
robot algorithms in the laboratory environment.
