Decentralized Kinematic Motion Control for Multiple Axle Compliant Framed Modular Wheeled Mobile Robots

Abstract

This paper presents a kinematic motion control strategy for a multiple-axle compliant framed modular wheeled mobile robot. A decentralized master-slave type control scheme is proposed here to solve motion control problems (posture regulation, path following, and trajectory tracking) of the n-axle robot. The controller considers physical constraints on the path curvature, wheel velocity, and traction forces as well as compliance between nonholonomic axle modules of the robot. The target application is an n-axle compliant framed modular mobile robot. This robot utilizes compliant frames to couple the unicycle type axles, which facilitates a simple modular design with full suspension and advanced steering capability. Simulation results are presented and the proposed control scheme is evaluated