Control of Wheeled Mobile Robots: An Experimental Overview

Abstract

The subject of this chapter is the motion control problem of wheeled mobile robots (WMRs). With reference to the unicycle kinematics, we review and compare several control strategies for trajectory tracking and posture stabilization in an environment free of obstacles. Experiments are reported for SuperMARIO, a two-wheel differentially-driven mobile robot. From the comparison of the obtained results, guidelines are provided for WMR end-users.

Control Analysis and Feedback Techniques for Multi Agent Robots

“…The flat outputs for the leader robot system are [x l (t), y l (t)] T (Luca et al, 2001). The flat outputs for a system are helpful in a way that all the system inputs, states and outputs can be determined algebraically from the flat outputs without integration.…”

“…The control law for posture stabilization based on the polar coordinates was presented in (Aicardi et al, 1995;Luca et al, 2001). This control design is based on the change of original coordinates to polar coordinates.…”

Implementation of Autonomous Navigation Algorithms on Two-Wheeled Ground Mobile Robot

“…Wheeled Mobile Robots (WMRs) are increasingly present in industrial and service robotics, particularly when flexible motion capabilities are required on reasonably smooth grounds and surfaces. Several mobility configurations (wheel number and type, their location and actuation and singleor multi-body vehicle structure) can be found in different applications (De Luca et al, 2001). The most common for single-body robots are differential drive and synchro drive (both kinematically equivalent to a unicycle), tricycle or car-like drive and omnidirectional steering (De Luca et al, 2001).…”

A Robust Nonlinear Control for Differential Mobile Robots and Implementation on Formation Control

“…To cope with the challenges arising in nonhonomic system control, a great number of approaches have been proposed and some selections of the vast amount of published literature are reflected in the survey paper (Kolmanovsky & McClamroch, 1995) and the book (Dixon et al, 2001) and in chapters (7 -9) of the book (Wit & Siciliano, 1996). Several controls from experiment perspectives are examined and implemented in the work (Luca et al, 2001). Central to the WMR motion control are the tracking control problems.…”