Capstone Design -- Robotics

Mobile Robot Locomotion

Prof. Jizhong Xiao

Department of Electrical Engineering
City College of New York
[email protected]
 Contents
 Introduction
 What is a robot?
 Types of robot
 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
 What is a robot?
 There’s no precise definition, but by general
agreement, Robots — machines with sensing,
intelligence and mobility.
 To be qualified as a robot, a machine has to be
able to:
1) Sensing and perception: get information from its
surroundings
2) Carry out different tasks: Locomotion or manipulation,
do something physical–such as move or manipulate
objects
3) Re-programmable: can do different things
4) Function autonomously and interact with human beings
 Types of Robots
 Robot Manipulators

• Mobile Manipulators
 Types of Robots
 Wheeled mobile
robots
 Legged robots
 Aerial robots
 Underwater robots
 Humanoid robots
Wheeled Mobile Robots (WMR)
 Wheeled Mobile Robots
 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
 Mobile Robot Locomotion
 Locomotion — the process of causing an robot to move.
 In order to produce motion, forces must be applied to the robot
 Motor output, payload
 Dynamics – study of motion in which these forces are
modeled
 Deals with the relationship between force and motions.
 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.
Notation

Posture: position(x, y)
and orientation 
 Non-holonomic constraint
So what does that mean?
Your robot can move in some directions (forwards
and backwards), but not others (side to side).

The robot can instantly

move forward and back,
but can not move to the
right or left without the Parallel parking,
wheels slipping. Series of maneuvers
 Idealized Rolling Wheel
 Assumptions:
 No slip occurs in the
orthogonal direction of
rolling (non-slipping).
 No translation slip occurs
between the wheel and the
floor (pure rolling).
Non-slipping and pure rolling  At most one steering link
per wheel with the steering
axis perpendicular to the
floor.
 Wheel parameters:
 r = wheel radius
 v = wheel linear velocity
 w = wheel angular velocity
Lateral slip
 t = steering velocity
 Wheel Types
Fixed wheel Centered orientable wheel

Off-centered orientable wheel

Swedish wheel:omnidirectional
(Castor wheel) property
 Examples of WMR
 Smooth motion
Example  Risk of slipping
 Some times use roller-ball to
make balance

Bi-wheel type robot

 Exact straight motion
 Robust to slipping
 Inexact modeling of turning

Caterpillar type robot

 Free motion
 Complex structure
 Weakness of the frame
Omnidirectional robot
 Mobile Robot Locomotion
 Instantaneous center of rotation (ICR) or
Instantaneous center of curvature (ICC)
 A cross point of all axes of the wheels
 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)
 Tricycle
 Steering wheel with two 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 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
 Differential Drive
Posture Kinematics Model (in world frame)
 Relation between the control input and speed of wheels

 Kinematic equation

 Nonholonomic constraint

H : A unit vector orthogonal to the plane of wheels

 Differential Drive
Configuration Kinematics Model (in robot frame)
 Basic Motion Control
 Instantaneous center of rotation

R : Radius of rotation

 Straight motion
R = Infinity VR = VL

 Rotational motion
R= 0 VR = -VL
 Tricycle
 Three wheels: two rear wheels and one front wheel
 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 w(t)
about a point lying a
distance R along the
line perpendicular to
and passing through
the rear wheels.
 Tricycle
Kinematics model in the robot frame
---configuration kinematics model

With no slippage
Tricycle
 Tricycle
Kinematics model in the world frame
---Posture kinematics model
 Synchronous Drive
 In a synchronous drive robot, 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
 This leads to a holonomic behavior
Synchronous Drive
 Synchronous Drive
 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
 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.
 Synchronous Drive
 Control variables (independent)
 v(t), w(t)
 Synchronous Drive
 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.
Omni-directional

Swedish Wheel
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.
 Generally the method of choice for outdoor
autonomous vehicles.
Ackerman Steering
 Ackerman Steering
 The Ackerman Steering equation:
 cot i- cot o=d/l
 where
 d = lateral wheel separation
 l = longitudinal wheel separation
 i = relative angle of inside wheel
 o = relative angle of outside wheel
Ackerman Steering
 Summary
 What is a robot?
 Types of robots
 Classification of wheels
 Mobile robot locomotion
 5 types
 Kinematics model of WMR
 Assignment
 Read chapters 2 and 4 of the text book

 Build robot body using LEGO blocks

 Build robot gripper