International Journal of Scientific Research Engineering & Technology (IJSRET), ISSN 2278 0882

Volume 4, Issue 3, March 2015

Comparison Study of Mamdani Method and Sugeno Method in The

Navigation System for Indoor Mobile Robot
Neha Preet Kaur1, Vikram Verma2
1

ECE deptt., JMIT Radaur, India

2
IT deptt., JMIT Radaur, India

ABSTRACT
Robotics is rapidly growing field and has attracted many
researchers for the evolution of human social needs.
Robotics has wide range of applications like
construction robotics, medical robotics, industrial
robotics, space robotics and many more. Among of these
fields particularly in manufacturing industry robots can
assist the human to make the task simpler or even can
replace the human to perform a task. Basically robot is a
mechanical device that interacts with the environment
physically and navigates through the environment. The
movement of autonomous robots in unknown
environment is a complex task that further require a
complex control system which can command the robot
to deal with that uncertainty and make them decide to
take appropriate step according to some algorithm or
rules which will be defined in that particular control
system. Lofti Zadeh proposed a mathematical system,
called fuzzy logic that can model the nonlinear problems
with less complexity.
Keywords - fuzzy logic, Mamdani method, MATLAB
simulation, Sugeno, Obstacle Avoidance, wall following.

I.

INTRODUCTION

This work wall following and obstacle collision

prevention behavior of mobile robot is carried by
implementing fuzzy logic controller. Although using
control as well as conventional control techniques [1, 2]
controller can be designed but an absolute mathematical
model is required in these techniques. Robotics field
involves high degree of uncertainty and complexity. Due
to nonlinearity property of mobile robot, it is difficult to
obtain absolute mathematical model of a system for
designing its controller [3]. Fuzzy logic is a soft
computing technique that does not require mathematical
model; it requires if-then rules using linguistic variables
to deal with the real time problems. Besides controlling
the mobile robot [4, 5], path planning and tracking of
robot [6-8], fuzzy logic has wide range of applications
like electrical motors speed control [9], robot
manipulator position control [10], complex and ill-

defined plants [11, 12]. Whenever a robot navigates

through the environment autonomously there are a lot of
uncertainties that a robot needs to cope with. There can
be number of obstacles, rough surface, sharp angles and
turns, stairs etc. the control technique should be accurate
enough to make robot not only to navigate through that
unknown environment but also can prevent obstacle
collision. Fuzzy based controller is more convenient
because it does not require mathematical model of a
system, secondly fuzzy logic is very suitable for
nonlinear problems and it is very easy to define rules in
fuzzy system as it does not require complex
mathematical terms.
Fuzzy inference system is decisions making program
in which fuzzy logic operators are applied on the
linguistic variables. Mamdani inference method and
Sugeno inference method are the most commonly used
in fuzzy systems.

II.

DESIGNING OF MOBILE ROBOT

Rectangular shaped mobile robot consists of two wheels,

with fixed distance between them, is implemented and
simulated in MATLAB. First, environmental scenario is
represented by digital image. A digital image can be
thought of as small dots on the screen called pixels.
Robot consists of two sensors at the 80 angle apart
called rangefinder [13]. These sensors measure the
distance from obstacle in terms of pixels. As the digital
image represented obstacle matrix where value 0
represents obstacle.

III.

FUZZY INFERENCE SYSTEM

Fuzzy control theory is the emerging technology that

have targeted the industrial applications and adding new
dimension to the existing domain of conventional
control system. Fuzzy logic is a mathematical tool for
dealing with uncertainty. In fuzzy logic information and
data boundary is not completely or clearly defined [14].
FL uses linguistic variables to represent a range of
values. An FL controller works in a progression of three
steps. First it receives input data that is processed

www.ijsret.org

166

International Journal of Scientific Research Engineering & Technology (IJSRET), ISSN 2278 0882
Volume 4, Issue 3, March 2015

through a fuzzification step. Fuzzification involves preset membership functions for data interpretation as
defined by the user. This data then enter a rule matrix of
IF-THEN statements to create a fuzzy output. In order
for the controller to use the processed output, one last
step, a defuzzification process turns the fuzzy output into
a clear and concise output value to be performed by the
system. Fig 1 shows the basic fuzzy inference system
diagram. The basic difference between mamdani method
and sugeno method lies in the defuzzification section. In
mamdani method defuzzifiction is done using linguistic
variables while on sugeno method this part consists of
either constant values or the linear values. Fuzzy set
theory is an extension of the classical set theory, and is
also a difficult mathematical notion [15].

In this work right distance and left distance measured by

robot is taken as antecedents while speed of left wheel
and right wheel is taken as the consequents. Both the
methodologies i.e. mamdani method and sugeno method
is applied and comparison is made between them. There
are three membership functions (near medium and far)
for both the antecendents; there are total nine rules that
define the speed of wheels.

Fig. 3 Sugeno method in obstructed path

Fig. 1 Fuzzy system

IV.

SIMULATION

In [13] Mamdani method was implemented and the path

followed by robot was showed. Here further two
different conditions are specified. First, path is rough
and in second stair case is considered. For both the
conditions mamdani method as well as sugeno method is
implemented. Here comparison between both the
methods is made for each condition. Comparison is
made in term of time taken by robot as well as path
followed by robot along the wall accurately.
Fig. 4 Mamdani method in path with obstacles
Here is considered that robot covers 250 steps.
Defuzzification method for Mamdani method is Center
of Gravity while for Sugeno method weighted average
defuzzification method is considered. If Fig 2 and Fig 3
analyse closely it is clear that in Sugeno method robot
can follow the wall more accurately or should say
Sugeno method can quickly orient along the wall than
Mamdani method.

Fig. 2 Mamdani method in obstructed path

www.ijsret.org

167

International Journal of Scientific Research Engineering & Technology (IJSRET), ISSN 2278 0882
Volume 4, Issue 3, March 2015

Fig. 5 Sugeno method in path with obstacles

Now consider the stair case. Now robot has to deal with
stairs. Here robot takes stair steps in both ways i.e.
ascending as well as descending way. Fig 4 and Fig 5
represents the path followed by the robot using Mamdani
technique and Sugeno technique respectively.

V.

RESULTS

Fig. 6 Comparison between angle of orientation

response for Mamdani and Sugeno method in obstructed
path
How the angle of orientation of robot change w.r.t time
is shown in Fig. 6 and Fig. 7 for obstructed path and path
with the obstacles respectively. There is a comparison
made between mamdani method and sugeno method in
both the figures. Positive value of angle of orientation on
graph shows that robot took the right turn to avoid the
obstacles.

Simulation results of this work are carried out on

MATLAB. Simple fuzzy controller is designed for robot
navigation obstacle avoidance. Further two different
methodologies are applied for comparison purposes.
Table 1 represents the time taken by robot (in seconds)
for different methods.
TABLE I.

S.
No.

TIME TAKEN BY ROBOT (IN SECONDS)

Mamda
ni
method
(obstruc
ted
path)

Sugeno
method
(obstruc
ted
path)

Sugeno
method
(path
with
obstacle
s)

68.630

Mamda
ni
method
(path
with
obstacle
s)
32.663

70.435

70.478

67.809

32.700

32.931

69.973

67.253

32.857

32.963

Fig. 7 Comparison between angle of orientation

response for Mamdani and Sugeno method in obstructed
path

VI.

32.860

Whenever robot sense the obstacle it has turn or change

the direction to avoid collision. Here an assumption is
made that after sensing the obstacle when robot takes
right turn then change in angle will be taken as positive
value otherwise change of angle will be negative.

CONCLUSION

Design and implementation of the robot is a complex

task but implying the fuzzy rules makes it less complex.
In present work a robot is designed and implemented in
MATLAB using fuzzy logic. Sugeno inference method
is applied which is computationally efficient but
Mamdani method is also implemented which has more
expressive power. If Fig. 5 is closely analyzed robot
with Sugeno method navigate along the stairs more
proficiently as compared to Mamdani method shown in
Fig. 4. If we compare both the figures ascending the
stairs using Sugeno method shows better results.

www.ijsret.org

168

International Journal of Scientific Research Engineering & Technology (IJSRET), ISSN 2278 0882
Volume 4, Issue 3, March 2015

Table I. represents the time taken by robot in 250 steps.

In first considered case where surface is rough robot
approximately takes more than twice the time than the
time taken by robot on smooth surface with obstacles.
Further in both case Mamdani as well as Sugeno method
is applied. In the case of obstructed or rough area
Sugeno takes less time than that of Mamdani method.
But in the case where obstacles and stairs are present
Mamdani takes approximate equal time to that of
Sugeno method but the path followed by robot using
Sugeno inference method is more adequate.

REFERENCES
[1] P. Van Turennout, G. Honderd, and L. J. Van
Schelven, Wall following control of a mobile
robot, Proc. IEEE International Conference on
Robotic and Automation, May 1992, pp. 280-285.
[2] Ricardo Carelli, and Eduardo Oliveira Freire
Corridor navigation and wall following stable
control for sonar based mobile robots, Robotics
and Autonomous Systems, vol. 45, 2003, pp. 235247.
[3] Umar Farooq, K. M. Hasan, Muhammad Usman
Asad, Syed Omer Saleh, Fuzzy Logic Based Wall
Tracking Controller for Mobile Robot Navigation,
7th IEEE Conference on Industrial Electronics and
Applications (ICIEA), July 2012, pp. 2102-2105.
[4] K. Demirli and M. Khoshnejad, Autonomous
parallel parking of a car-like mobile robot by a
neuro-fuzzy sensor-based controller, Fuzzy Sets
and Systems, vol. 160, no. 19, 2009, pp. 2876-2891.
[5] M. Alata, M. Jarrah, K. Demirli, and A. Bulgak,
Fuzzy gain scheduling for position control of a
robot manipulator, Intelligent and Fuzzy Systems,
vol. 8, no. 2, 2000, pp.111-120.
[6] B.R. Fajen, W.H. Warren, S. Temizer, and L.P.
Kaelbling, A dynamical model of visually-guided
steering, obstacle avoidance, and route selection,
International Journal of Computer Vision, vol. 54
(1/2/3), pp. 1334, 2003.
[7] S. Vitabile, G. Pilato, F. Pullara and F. Sorbello, A
navigation system for vision-guided mobile
robots,1999.
[8] M. Fiala, Linear markers for robot navigation with
panoramic vision, in Proc. of the First Conference
on Computer and Robot Vision (CRV04), 2004.
[9] K. Demirli and I. Turksen, Mobile robot navigation
with generalized modus ponens type fuzzy
reasoning, In the Proceedings of the IEEE
International Conference on Systems, Man, and

Cybernetics, Vancouver, Canada, pp 3724-3729.

1995..
[10]
K. Demirli and M. Molhim, Fuzzy dynamic
localization for mobile robots, Fuzzy Sets and
Systems, vol. 144, no. 2, 2004, pp. 251-283.
[11]
S. Labiod and T. M. Guerra, Adaptive fuzzy
control of a class of SISO nonaffine nonlinear
systems, Fuzzy Sets and Systems, vol.158,
pp.11261137, 2007.
[12]
H. K. Lam and F. H. F. Leung, Fuzzy controller
with stability and performance rules for nonlinear
systems, Fuzzy Sets and Systems, vol. 158, pp.
147163, 2007.
[13]
Neha Preet Kaur, Vikram Verma, A Novel
Approach For Controlling Robot Using Fuzzy
Logic, 8th International Conference on Advanced
Computing and Communication Technologies,
November 2014, pp.109-112.
[14]
S. N. Sivanandam, S. Sumathi and S. N. Deepa,
Introduction to Fuzzy Logic using MATLAB,
Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg, 2007.
[15]
Timothy J Ross, Fuzzy Logic with Engineering
Applications , 2nd ed. New York: Wiley, 2001.

www.ijsret.org

169