Kinematics Analysis and Motion Control of a Mobile Robot Driven by Three Tracked Vehicles

Abstract

In this paper, a mobile robot named VicRoB with 6 degrees of freedom (DOFs) driven by three tracked vehicles is designed and analyzed. The robot employs a 3-PPSR parallel configuration. The scheme of the mechanism and the inverse kinematic solution are given. A path planning method of a single tracked vehicle and a coordinated motion planning of three tracked vehicles are proposed. The mechanical structure and the electrical architecture of VicRoB prototype are illustrated. VicRoB can achieve the point-to-point motion mode and the continuous motion mode with employing the motion planning method. The orientation precision of VicRoB is measured in a series of motion experiments, which verifies the feasibility of the motion planning method. This work provides a kinematic basis for the orientation closed loop control of VicRoB whether it works on flat or rough road.

Motion Control and Trajectory Planning for Obstacle Avoidance of the Mobile Parallel Robot Driven by Three Tracked Vehicles

“…More detailed information about VicRoB is in ref. [11]. An inertial measurement unit is used for calculating the attitude.…”

“…In order to work in the rough terrain with sand and gravel, we employed three tracked vehicles as the driving units, and the new MPR with six degrees of freedom is named as VicRoB. 11 Researchers have done much work on MPR, but less attention has been paid to the obstacle avoidance problem. This paper will focus on the problem and give a solution.…”