rent outputs. If there is any difference between them,
the internal weights are iteratively changed accord-
ing to certain learning algorithms. The process stops
when a convergence criterion is met.
The number of neurons, its disposition into lay-
ers, the way they are interconnected, the approach
used to update weights and the mechanism by which
a neuron forwards its knowledge to another neurons
conform the architecture of the network. The archi-
tecture determines its velocity and precision (Wilson,
W., 1993).
But in certain architectures it is possible to let the
network learn in a competitive fashion. Competitive
learning is a rule based on the idea that only one neu-
ron from a given iteration in a given layer will fire at
a time. These types of networks are known as self-
organizing networks. In this case the current input is
compared to the weight vectors of the neurons and the
closest vectors determine the winning neuron (Koho-
nen, T., 1991).
The Kohonen’s Self-Organizing Maps (SOM) is
probablythe most relevant competitivenetwork archi-
tecture. It has been used successfully in many prob-
lems such as automatic speech recognition (Behme,
H., 1993), clinical voice analysis (Godino-Llorente,
J., 2000) (Hiltunen, T., 1993), etc. Specifically in the
robotic field it is intensively used in many problems
like robot navigation (Hu, H., 2000), cloud classifi-
cation from satellite images (Kilpatrick, D., 1995),
kinematic of a robot arm (Kieffer, S., 1991), adap-
tive controller for autonomous mobile robots (Kim,
Y., 1992), robot motion planning in dynamic envi-
ronments (Knobbe, A., 1995), spatial understand-
ing and temporal correlation for mobile robot (Kr-
ishna, K., 2000), etc. This project uses an exten-
sion of the SOM named Distributed Self-Organizing
Map (DSOM) where NN is trained using decentral-
ized learning. There are many DSOM implementa-
tion approaches(Pascual-Marqui,A., 2001) (Lobo, V.,
1998) and applications in this field (?). In (Lobo, V.,
1998) it is applied with the sonar noise to detect the
shape of a navy. In the context of this project, it is also
used for obstacle recognition. But the information
comes from different types of sensors that feeds asyn-
chronously even for the same object. This requires a
redesign of parts of the original DSOM model to let it
aggregate patterns from partial, noisy and incomplete
data of the obstacle.
Regarding the world map, the area is segmented
into portions. Boundaries between those segments
are not sharp but can be fuzzy. Fuzzy logic (FL) has
been successfully used to solve many complex prob-
lems. It is inherently robust, can be modified and
tweaked easily to improve the system performance
and can control nonlinear systems (Cox, E., 1992)
(Lee, C., 1990). In general, FL is used in many ap-
plications where noise, error and missing data is typ-
ical, mainly in control theory and artificial intelli-
gence. Among other applications are wireless com-
munications (Erman, M., 2009), velocity induction
for a motor (Kumar, V., 2005), operational meteorol-
ogy (Murtha, J., 1995), data mining and Information
Retrieval(Meunier, B., 2007), etc. This project pro-
poses a new FL usage in the world map segment ad-
ministration. Although it has been used in philoso-
phy (Kosko, B., 1993) and psychology (Didelon, C.,
1991) for evaluating the individual usage and charac-
teristics of its cognitive maps (or interpretative maps),
the approach to manage segments of a robots world-
map is a contribution in the field. In the context of this
work, FL is important to guarantee the proper control
of the robot during the migration from one segment
to another in the map. If the services provided by the
robot or its abilities are critical, the fuzzy boundaries
allow the system to take a period of time to adapt the
current activity softly.
This article is organized as follows: Section 2
describes the proposed architecture for a distributed
memory. Later in 3, the proposed information ap-
proach is presented. Section 4 describes the software
that is used in this work. Conclusions and future work
are presented in 5.
2 PROPOSED ARCHITECTURE
2.1 Global Description
Fig. 1 shows the proposed global system architec-
ture. The physical workspace covered by the system
is logically split into segments (S
i
). Every partition
has a Logical Central Point (LCP) that regulates the
activity of the agents within S. It can also handle a
local world map and define its boundaries. A team
of autonomous robots is constantly providing services
within each segment. Any robot is able to perform a
set of different services. To do so, it can download
from the LCP the service that it should provide and
the corresponding hardware configuration required to
perform these services. It can also upload its sensory
data to its corresponding LCP.
2.2 Logical Central Point
A Logical Central Point (LCP) is a logical role that
behaves as the manager of a segment S. A LCP can
be any data processing unit, for example a desktop
computer of a processor mounted on a robot. Custom
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