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This paper describes the design and development of a sensor based navigation system which makes it possible for a nonholonomous mobile robot to follow walls using information on its environment picked up by a belt of ultrasonic sensors. To control the robot no preliminary information regarding its environment is required, the robot adapts to them through the information gathered on the spot by the ultrasonic sensors and the information released from a spatial memory. The controller allows the generation of the signal to the robot motors. It has been developed in two directions: one being based on the concept of general perception, and the other on the concept of distributed perception. In carrying out both of these lines of development, the principle of fuzzy logic has been applied. The navigation system has been tested on a prototype mobile robot (VEA-II) developed at IKERLAN, which is highly manoeuvrable and capable of moving both in a holonomous and nonholonomous configurations.