A Systematic Approach to Kinematics Modeling of High Mobility Wheeled Rovers

Abstract

The paper proposes a systematic, data-driven method for kinematics modeling of high mobility wheeled rovers traversing uneven terrain. The method is based on the propagation of position and orientation velocities starting from the rover reference frame and going through various joints and linkages to the wheels. Equations of the motion are set up in a compact form, which only require the D-H parameters of the rover joints and links. To illustrate the proposed kinematics modeling, the method is applied to a rover similar to the NASA's Sample Return Rover.1 3 × translation velocity vector of the next frame i+1 is dependent on the translational and rotational velocities of the current frame i plus any translational velocity added to the frame i+1 itself. This can be written as [16]

Kinematics Modeling of Multi-legged Robots walking on Rough Terrain

“…This paper extends and generalizes our previous work on wheeled mobile robots [10]- [11], and proposes a systematic approach to full kinematics modeling of a general multilegged walking robot. The full kinematics model relates the motion of the body to motions of the legs.…”

“…It is shown in our previous paper that the velocity propagation from the frame to the frame is [11] 1 i…”

Enhanced 3D Kinematic Modeling of Wheeled Mobile Robots

“…Le Menn et al [16] extend a reciprocal screw-based approach to derive the 3D kinematics of multi-monocycle robots. Tarokh et al (in later papers) [26][27], Chang et al [4], and Kelly and Seegmiller [12] use a velocity propagation-based approach, similar to the one used here. Choi and Sreenivasan [5] and Chakraborty and Ghosal [3] do not provide general methods for kinematics derivation, but simulate 3D WMR kinematics to validate mechanism designs.…”

“…Each frame is attached to a single parent frame by a revolute or prismatic joint. Unlike some prior work [26][4] our method does not require the Denavit-Hartenberg convention, which allows more intuitive frame definitions; joint axes may be aligned with any one of the x, y, or z axes. Wheel frames are attached via revolute joints about their y axes.…”

“…Instead we compute the velocity kinematics directly using a recursive NewtonEuler technique, originally developed for manipulators by Luh et al [18]. Later papers on WMR kinematics have used similar velocity propagation techniques [26][4] [12].…”