Parking Control of Mixed Conventional/Braking Actuation Mobile Robots Using Fuzzy Logic Control

Abstract

The use of conventional actuators in robotic systems (electric motors in particular), while often offering advantages in terms of flexibility and controllability, suffer from primary actuator failure, due to unexpected complexities in their environment, which can lead to loss of controllability. Conventional actuators can impose disadvantages on mechanical complexity, weight, and cost. Here, the Mixed conventional/braking Actuation Mobile Robot (MAMR), a new mobile robot platform, is proposed to tackle such drawbacks in actuation and explore the use and control of braking actuation. This platform substitutes the drive motors used in Ackermann steering with brakes that have only two states, ON and OFF. Additionally, the conventional drive wheels are replaced by a single, omni-directional wheel that only supports a driving force in the robots longitudinal direction. The ability of braking actuators in providing controllability under actuator failure is one of the primary motivations of this work. To validate the reliability and accuracy of MAMR approach, this paper studies the design of such robotic systems, the design and synthesis of fuzzy logic controllers along with the experimental assessments of these controllers in real-time. The experimental tests point out the controller performance enhancement using fuzzy logic controllers and MAMR.

Nonlinear control synthesis for parking control of mixed conventional/braking actuation mobile robots

“…This work builds on our previous work on the parking control problem of the MAMR presented in [15,18] by demonstrating experimental performance of a SMC-based parking controller. The MAMR presented in [18], with its ball-type caster brakes and ability to move in any direction, is treated as holonomic.…”

“…Conventional wheels Cytron 10A DC motor driver Figure 1: The prototype of the MAMR used for experimental validation. This robot is the same robot as the one used in [15] except the Adafruit motor driver is replaced by a Cytron 10A DC motor driver.…”

“…Drive motor failure Brakes Wheels Figure 2: Differential drive robot with brakes incorporated along the wheel plane [15]. 4.…”

“…For example, Simmons et al [19] presented a prototype of the MAMR that uses a ball-type caster as a braking actuator. Improving on the design presented in [19], Nikshi et al [15] presented a prototype of the MAMR that uses brakes with conventional wheels to improve the coefficient of friction and reduce the mechanical complexity due to using an omni-directional ball-type caster.…”

“…To solve such problems in mobile robotics, the authors in [15,[18][19][20] proposed a new actuation approach that uses a mixture of conventional and braking actuation systems. This approach results in a new mobile robotic platform called the Mixed conventional/braking Actuation Mobile Robot (MAMR).…”