Modeling and control of two-wheeled vehicles using active caster wheels

Abstract

Conventionally, caster wheels are placed underneath a vehicle to provide passive support. The caster wheels do not additionally restrict the vehicle's mobility. Inspired by the success of a commercial funboard RipStik, we explore the use of actively driven caster wheels within autonomous mobile robots. Specifically, we explore the nature of the governing equations of a vehicle with caster wheels having possible angular offsets. We study properties of the vehicle such as feedback linearizability and controller development for point-to-point control of the vehicle in the state space.