Planning an optimal path for a mobile robot is a complicated problem as it allows the mobile robots to navigate autonomously by following the safest and shortest path between starting and goal points. The present work deals with the design of intelligent path planning algorithms for a mobile robot in static and dynamic environments based on swarm intelligence optimization. A modification based on the age of the ant is introduced to standard ant colony optimization, called aging-based ant colony optimization (ABACO). The ABACO was implemented in association with grid-based modeling for the static and dynamic environments to solve the path planning problem. The simulations are run in the MATLAB environment to test the validity of the proposed algorithms. Simulations showed that the proposed path planning algorithms result in superior performance by finding the shortest and the most free-collision path under various static and dynamic scenarios. Furthermore, the superiority of the proposed algorithms was proved through comparisons with other traditional path planning algorithms with different static environments.

The design of a swarm optimization-based fractional control for engineering application is an active research topic in the optimization analysis. This work offers the analysis, design, and simulation of a new neural network- (NN) based nonlinear fractional control structure. With suitable arrangements of the hidden layer neurons using nonlinear and linear activation functions in the hidden and output layers, respectively, and with appropriate connection weights between different hidden layer neurons, a new class of nonlinear neural fractional-order proportional integral derivative (NNFOPID) controller is proposed and designed. It is obtained by approximating the fractional derivative and integral actions of the FOPID controller and applied to the motion control of nonholonomic differential drive mobile robot (DDMR). The proposed NNFOPID controller’s parameters consist of derivative, integral, and proportional gains in addition to fractional integral and fractional derivative orders. The tuning of these parameters makes the design of such a controller much more difficult than the classical PID one. To tackle this problem, a new swarm optimization algorithm, namely, MAPSO-EFFO algorithm, has been proposed by hybridization of the modified adaptive particle swarm optimization (MAPSO) and the enhanced fruit fly optimization (EFFO) to tune the parameters of the NNFOPID controller. Firstly, we developed a modified adaptive particle swarm optimization (MAPSO) algorithm by adding an initial run phase with a massive number of particles. Secondly, the conventional fruit fly optimization (FFO) algorithm has been modified by increasing the randomness in the initialization values of the algorithm to cover wider searching space and then implementing a variable searching radius during the update phase by starting with a large radius which decreases gradually during the searching phase. The tuning of the parameters of the proposed NNFOPID controller is carried out by reducing the MS error of 0.000059, whereas the MSE of the nonlinear neural system (NNPID) is equivalent to 0.00079. The NNFOPID controller also decreased control signals that drive DDMR motors by approximately 45 percent compared to NNPID and thus reduced energy consumption in circular trajectories. The numerical simulations revealed the excellent performance of the designed NNFOPID controller by comparing its performance with that of nonlinear neural (NNPID) controllers on the trajectory tracking of the DDMR with different trajectories as study cases.

The present work deals with the design of intelligent path planning algorithms for a mobile robot in static and dynamic environments based on swarm intelligence optimization. Two modifications are suggested to improve the searching process of the standard bat algorithm with the result of two novel algorithms. The first algorithm is a Modified Frequency Bat algorithm, and the second is a hybridization between the Particle Swarm Optimization with the Modified Frequency Bat algorithm, namely, the Hybrid Particle Swarm Optimization-Modified Frequency Bat algorithm. Both Modified Frequency Bat and Hybrid Particle Swarm Optimization-Modified Frequency Bat algorithms have been integrated with a proposed technique for obstacle detection and avoidance and are applied to different static and dynamic environments using free-space modeling. Moreover, a new procedure is proposed to convert the infeasible solutions suggested via path the proposed swarm-inspired optimization-based path planning algorithm into feasible ones. The simulations are run in MATLAB environment to test the validation of the suggested algorithms. They have shown that the proposed path planning algorithms result in superior performance by finding the shortest and smoothest collision-free path under various static and dynamic scenarios.

A consensus control law is proposed for a multi-agent system of quadrotors with leader–follower communication topology for three quadrotor agents. The genetic algorithm (GA) is the proposed optimization technique to tune the consensus control parameters. The complete nonlinear model is used without any further simplifications in the simulations, while simplification in the model is used to theoretically design the controller. Different case studies and tests are done (i.e., trajectory tracking formation and switching topology) to show the effectiveness of the proposed controller. The results show good performance in all tests while achieving the consensus of the desired formations.