Motion Planning and Control of Differential Drive Robot

摘要

Motion planning and control of a differential drive robot in a supervised environment is presented in this thesis. Differential drive robot is a mobile robot with two driving wheels in which the overall velocity is split between left and right wheels. Kinematic equations are derived and implemented in Simulink to observe the theoretical working principle of the robot. A proportional controller is designed to control the motion of the robot, which is later implemented on a physical robot. Combination of linear velocity and orientation generates individual wheel velocities which are sent to the robot by wireless communication for its motion. Point to point motion and shapes, such as square and circle, are performed to implement and test the robustness of the controller designed. Others tasks such as leader-follower, pursuer-evader and obstacle detection and avoidance are carried out using multiple robots. For flexibility of the robot, a GUI software is developed for waypoint assignment for the robots to follow through. Different systems such as Vicon Camera, Matlab-Simulink, Xbees, QUARC and robots were integrated via software and hardware in the UAV lab at Wright State University. The camera system used throughout this thesis helps to understand the functioning of a GPS. QUARC, Matlab-Simulink, XBees are used in processing and communication of data from cameras to the robot.