Control de Tracción en Robots Móviles con Ruedas

Abstract

This article presents a solution to improve the performance of wheeled mobile robots that move upon surfaces with small coefficient of static friction. In these circumstances the wheeled mobile robots can experience loss of traction and therefore, slide along the surface. The proposed solution implies the use of a special configuration for the mobile robot, in which all the wheels are driven independently, and a control structure which consists of three distinct parts: firstly, a state-feedback tracking controller based on the kinematic model of the mobile robot is derived. Secondly, an extension of the kinematic control law is made to incorporate the dynamics of the wheeled mobile robot via backstepping. Thirdly, a traction force distribution algorithm that calculates the proper reference signals for each rear wheel is included and the feedback tracking control laws are finally completed. With this solution is possible to control the position and the velocity of the wheeled mobile robot but, at the same time, to distribute the traction force between the wheels in such a way that their sliding is avoided. The effectiveness and usefulness of the designed control algorithms are demonstrated in laboratory experiments using a prototype of the wheeled mobile robot.