MOBOT: MOBILE

ROBOT
■ Introduction
■ Classification of wheels
– Fixed wheel
– Centered orientable wheel
– Off-centered orientable wheel
– Swedish wheel
■ Mobile Robot Locomotion
– Differential Drive
– Tricycle
– Synchronous Drive
– Omni-directional
– Ackerman Steering
■ Kinematics models of WMR
■ Summary
 Introduction
Robotics has achieved its greatest success to date in the world of industrial manufacturing. Robot arms,
or manipulators, comprise a 2 billion dollar industry. Bolted at its shoulder to a specific position in the
assembly line, the robot arm can move with great speed and accuracy to perform repetitive tasks such
as spot welding and painting
 Locomotion

 Locomotion is the process of causing an autonomous robot to move

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 In order to produce motion, forces must be applied to the vehicle
Wheeled Mobile Robots (WMR)
The mobile robot Sojourner was used during the Pathfinder mission to
explore Mars in summer 1997.It was almost completely teleoperated
from Earth. However, some on-board sensors allowed for obstacle
detection.(http://ranier.oact.hq.nasa.gov/telerobotics_page/telerobotics.
shtm).© NASA/JPL

Plustech developed the first application-driven walking robot. It is designed to move

wood out of the forest. The leg coordination is automated, but navigation is still done
by the human operator on the robot. (http://www.plustech.fi). © Plustech.
Airduct inspection robot featuring a pan-tilt camera with zoom
and sensors for automatic inclination control, wall following,
and intersection detection (http://asl.epfl.ch). © Sedirep /
EPFL.

Picture of Pioneer, a robot designed to explore the Sarcophagus at

Chernobyl. © Wide World Photos.
Picture of recovering MBARI’s ALTEX AUV (autonomous
underwater vehicle) onto the Icebreaker Healy following a dive
beneath the Arctic ice. Todd Walsh © 2001 MBARI.

Tour-guide robots are able to interact and present exhibitions in an

educational way. Ten Roboxes have operated during 5 months at the Swiss
exhibition EXPO.02, meeting hundreds of thousands of visitors.
■ Combination of various physical (hardware) and
computational (software) components

■ A collection of subsystems:
– Locomotion: how the robot moves through its
environment
– Sensing: how the robot measures properties of itself
and its environment
– Control: how the robot generate physical actions
– Reasoning: how the robot maps measurements into
actions
– Communication: how the robots communicate with
each other or with an outside operator
■ Locomotion — the process of causing an robot to move.
– In order to produce motion, forces must be applied to the robot
– Motor output, payload

■ Kinematics – study of the mathematics of motion without

considering the forces that affect the motion.
– Deals with the geometric relationships that govern the system
– Deals with the relationship between control parameters and the
behavior of a system.

■ Dynamics – study of motion in which these forces are

modeled
– Deals with the relationship between force and motions.
Notation

Posture: position(x, y) and

orientation 
Wheels

Rolling motion

Lateral slip
Steered Wheel
■ Steered wheel
– The orientation of the rotation axis can be controlled
Idealized Rolling Wheel
• Assumptions
1. The robot is built from rigid mechanisms.
2. No slip occurs in the orthogonal direction
of rolling (non-slipping).
3. No translational slip occurs between the
wheel and the floor (pure rolling).
4. The robot contains at most one steering
link per wheel.
5. All steering axes are perpendicular to the
floor.
Robot wheel parameters

■ For low velocities, rolling is a reasonable wheel model.

– This is the model that will be considered in the kinematics models
of WMR
■ Wheel parameters:
– r = wheel radius
– v = wheel linear velocity
– w = wheel angular velocity
– t = steering velocity
 Wheel Types
Fixed wheel Centered orientable wheel

Off-centered orientable wheel

(Castor wheel)
Swedish wheel:omnidirectional
property
 Fixed wheel
– Velocity of point P

where, ax : A unit vector to X axis

– Restriction to the robot mobility

Point P cannot move to the direction perpendicular to plane of the wheel.
Centered orientable wheels
– Velocity of point P

ax : A unit vector of x axis

ay : A unit vector of y axis

– Restriction to the robot mobility

y
Off-Centered Orientable Wheels

– Velocity of point P

where, ax : A unit vector of x axis

ay : A unit vector of y axis

– Restriction to the robot mobility

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Swedish wheel
– Velocity of point P

where, ax : A unit vector of x axis

as : A unit vector to the motion of roller

– Omnidirectional property

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 Examples of WMR

Example ■ Smooth motion

■ Risk of slipping
■ Some times use roller-ball to
Bi-wheel type robot make balance
• Exact straight motion
• Robust to slipping
• Inexact modeling of turning

Caterpillar type robot

• Free motion
• Complex structure
• Weakness of the frame

Omnidirectional robot

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Mobile Robot Locomotion
■ Instantaneous center of rotation (ICR) or
Instantaneous center of curvature (ICC)
– A cross point of all axes of the wheels

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Degree of Mobility
■ Degree of mobility
The degree of freedom of the robot motion

Cannot move Fixed arc motion

anywhere (No ICR) (Only one ICR)

• Degree of mobility : 0 • Degree of mobility : 1

Fully free motion

Variable arc motion
(line of ICRs) ( ICR can be located
at any position)
• Degree of mobility : 2 • Degree of mobility : 3
Degree of Steerability
■ Degree of steerability
The number of centered orientable wheels that can be
steered independently in order to steer the robot

No centered orientable wheels

• Degree of steerability : 0

One centered orientable

wheel

Two mutually Two mutually

dependent centered independent
orientable wheels centered orientable
wheels

• Degree of steerability : 1 • Degree of steerability : 2

Degree of Maneuverability
• The overall degrees of freedom that a robot can manipulate:
M  m  s

• Examples of robot types (degree of mobility, degree of steerability)

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Degree of Maneuverability

M  m  s
Mobile Robot Locomotion
■ Differential Drive
– two driving wheels (plus roller-ball for balance)
– simplest drive mechanism
– sensitive to the relative velocity of the two wheels (small error result
in different trajectories, not just speed)

■ Steered wheels (tricycle, bicycles, wagon)

– Steering wheel + rear wheels
– cannot turn 90º
– limited radius of curvature

■ Synchronous Drive
■ Omni-directional
■ Car Drive (Ackerman Steering)
Differential Drive

■ Posture of the robot • Control input

(x,y) : Position of the robot v : Linear velocity of the robot

: Orientation of the robot w : Angular velocity of the robot
(notice: not for each wheel)
Differential Drive
VR (t )– linear velocity of right wheel
VL (t )– linear velocity of left wheel
r – nominal radius of each wheel
R – instantaneous curvature radius of the robot trajectory
(distance from ICC (instantaneous center of curvature) to the
midpoint between the two wheels).

Property: At each time instant, the

left and right wheels must follow a
trajectory that moves around the
ICC at the same angular rate , i.e.,
L L
 ( R  )  VR  ( R  )  VL
2 2
Posture Kinematics Model: Kinematics model in world frame
• Relation between the control input and speed of wheels


90  
• Kinematic equation


90   
Differential Drive
Kinematics model in robot frame
---configuration kinematics model
Tricycle
■ Three wheels and odometers on the two rear wheels
■ Steering and power are provided through the front wheel
■ control variables:
– steering direction α(t)
– angular velocity of steering wheel ws(t)

The ICC must lie on

the line that passes
through, and is
perpendicular to, the
fixed rear wheels
Tricycle

■ If the steering wheel is

set to an angle α(t)
from the straight-line
direction, the tricycle
will rotate with angular
velocity ω(t) about ICC
lying a distance R along
the line perpendicular
to and passing through
the rear wheels.
Tricycle

d: distance from the front wheel to the rear axle

Synchronous Drive
■ In a synchronous drive robot (synchronous drive)
each wheel is capable of being driven and
steered.
■ Typical configurations
– Three steered wheels arranged as vertices
of an equilateral
– triangle often surmounted by a cylindrical
platform
– All the wheels turn and drive in unison
■ All the wheels turn in unison
■ All of the three wheels point in the same direction and
turn at the same rate
– This is typically achieved through the use of a complex collection
of belts that physically link the wheels together
– Two independent motors, one rolls all wheels forward, one rotate
them for turning
■ The vehicle controls the direction in which the wheels
point and the rate at which they roll
■ Because all the wheels remain parallel the synchro
drive always rotate about the center of the robot
■ The synchro drive robot has the ability to control the
orientation θ of their pose directly.
■ Control variables (independent)
– v(t), ω(t)
■ Particular cases:
– v(t)=0, w(t)=w during a
time interval ∆t, The
robot rotates in place
by an amount w ∆t .

– v(t)=v, w(t)=0 during a

time interval ∆t , the
robot moves in the
direction its pointing a
distance v ∆t.
Omidirectional

Swedish Wheel
Omni Wheels – 3 Wheel vs. 4 Wheel design
3-wheel design:
A three wheel design offers greater traction as any
reactive force is distributed through only three points and
the robot is well balanced even on uneven terrain.

This design also reduces an additional wheel compared

to a 4 wheeled robot which makes it cost effective (yes,
these wheels are expensive).

Few designers add two wheels parallel to each other and one wheel perpendicular to
the two wheels which is a better design or a compromise between three and four
wheeled Omni-drive robots.

3-wheeled Omni robots come with their own disadvantages. First from the design
perspective, since the wheels are spaced at 120°, only one of the wheels will be
100% efficient; In other words, there is only one driving wheel and two free wheels
which make it drive at lower speed.

The next major annoyance is with the calculation. Since none of the wheels are
aligned in the same axis, it requires 3 different calculations for 3 wheels.
4-wheel design:
In 4 wheel design, 4 Omni wheels are attached at
90° to each other.

This means any two wheels are parallel to each

other and other two wheels perpendicular.

The first and the major benefit is the simplified

calculation. Since there are two pairs of wheels,
each pair requires only one calculation and all four
wheels require only two calculations.
Also at any point there are two driving wheels and
two free wheels. This makes the two driving
wheels 100% efficient and drivers the robot at
higher speed compared to 3-wheel design.
The only drawback which have found is that a four-wheeled Omni robot does not balance on
irregular terrain and also not all four wheels are guaranteed to stay on the same plane.

Additional wheel might also pose an extra cost, but the advantage makes this seem a minor
concern.
Drawbacks:
1.Omni-wheels are expensive
2.They are less efficient since not all wheels are fully utilized for driving and
controlling the robot
3.Since Omni wheels are a combination of many wheels / rollers into one, there is a
greater resistance to rotation which leads to greater loss of energy; i.e. Loss due to
friction.
4.Since Omni-wheeled robot works on the principle of slippage, position control is
difficult
Car Drive (Ackerman Steering)
■ Used in motor vehicles, the
inside front wheel is
rotated slightly sharper
than the outside wheel
(reduces tire slippage).
■ Ackerman steering
provides a fairly accurate
dead-reckoning solution
while supporting traction
and ground clearance.
R
■ Generally the method of
choice for outdoor
autonomous vehicles.
 R

where
d = lateral wheel separation
l = longitudinal wheel separation
i = relative steering angle of inside wheel
o = relative steering angle of outside wheel
R=distance between ICC to centerline of the vehicle
■ The Ackerman Steering equation:

– :
d cos
coti  coto  cot 
l sin 

cot i  cot o
Rd /2 Rd /2
 
l l
d

l

R
Kinematic model for car-like robot

■ Control Input
■ Driving type: Forward wheel drive

Y x, y
 { x, y ,  ,  }
u1 : forward vel
 {u1 , u 2 } u : steering vel
2
{ 1 ,  2 }

X
Kinematic model for car-like robot

x  u1 cos
x, y
y  u1 sin  Y

 u1
  tan 
l 
  u2

X
x sin   y cos  0 u1
u2
: forward velocity
: steering velocity