Design and Control of a Four-Wheeled Omnidirectional Mobile Robot with Steerable Omnidirectional Wheels

2004 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 193-208 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jae-Bok Song ◽  
Kyung-Seok Byun
Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 865
Author(s):  
Jordi Palacín ◽  
David Martínez ◽  
Elena Rubies ◽  
Eduard Clotet

The optimal design of an omnidirectional wheel is usually focused on the minimization of the gap between the free rollers of the wheel in order to minimize contact discontinuities with the floor in order to minimize the generation of vibrations. However, in practice, a fast, tall, and heavy-weighted mobile robot using optimal omnidirectional wheels may also need a suspension system in order to reduce the presence of vibrations and oscillations in the upper part of the mobile robot. This paper empirically evaluates whether a heavy-weighted omnidirectional mobile robot can take advantage of its passive suspension system in order to also use non-optimal or suboptimal omnidirectional wheels with a non-optimized inner gap. The main comparative advantages of the proposed suboptimal omnidirectional wheel are its low manufacturing cost and the possibility of taking advantage of the gap to operate outdoors. The experimental part of this paper compares the vibrations generated by the motion system of a versatile mobile robot using optimal and suboptimal omnidirectional wheels. The final conclusion is that a suboptimal wheel with a large gap produces comparable on-board vibration patterns while maintaining the traction and increasing the grip on non-perfect planar surfaces.


2009 ◽  
Vol 131 (12) ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Udengaard ◽  
Karl Iagnemma

An omnidirectional mobile robot is able, kinematically, to move in any direction regardless of current pose. To date, nearly all designs and analyses of omnidirectional mobile robots have considered the case of motion on flat, smooth terrain. In this paper, an investigation of the design and control of an omnidirectional mobile robot for use in rough terrain is presented. Kinematic and geometric properties of the active split offset caster drive mechanism are investigated along with system and subsystem design guidelines. An optimization method is implemented to explore the design space. The use of this method results in a robot that has higher mobility than a robot designed using engineering judgment. A simple kinematic controller that considers the effects of terrain unevenness via an estimate of the wheel-terrain contact angles is also presented. It is shown in simulation that under the proposed control method, near-omnidirectional tracking performance is possible even in rough, uneven terrain.


Robotica ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 31 (6) ◽  
pp. 969-980 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yaser Maddahi ◽  
Ali Maddahi ◽  
Nariman Sepehri

SUMMARYOdometry errors, which occur during wheeled mobile robot movement, are inevitable as they originate from hard-to-avoid imperfections such as unequal wheels diameters, joints misalignment, backlash, slippage in encoder pulses, and much more. This paper extends the method, developed previously by the authors for calibration of differential mobile robots, to reduce positioning errors for the class of mobile robots having omnidirectional wheels. The method is built upon the easy to construct kinematic formulation of omnidirectional wheels, and is capable of compensating both systematic and non-systematic errors. The effectiveness of the method is experimentally investigated on a prototype three-wheeled omnidirectional mobile robot. The validations include tracking unseen trajectories, self-rotation, as well as travelling over surface irregularities. Results show that the method is very effective in improving position errors by at least 68%. Since the method is simple to implement and has no assumption on the sources of errors, it should be considered seriously as a tool for calibrating omnidirectional mobile having any number of wheels.


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