A GENERIC KINEMATIC FORMULATION FOR WHEELED MOBILE ROBOTS

This article presents a generic kinematic formulation and a procedure developed to deduce the kinematics of wheeled mobile robots (WMRs), al so known in the literature as driverless ground vehicles, automated gu ided vehicles (AGVs), and autonomous transit vehicles (ATVs). The gene ric formulation to deduce the kinematics of WMRs with various combinat ions of driving and steering wheels is obtained by making use of the t ransformation approach and modifying the kinematic formulations develo ped for WMRs with inclined steering columns. A general expression for the angular velocity of wheel slip is derived to extend the suitabilit y of the formulations for WMRs with various combinations of driving an d steering wheels. It is illustrated that the procedure developed prov ides the final form of the kinematic equations by providing only the k inematic parameters of the WMR, including the type of wheels employed for the generic model. This approach is useful to automate the modelin g procedure to obtain either symbolic expressions or numerical values for WMR kinematics. Several case studies are presented to illustrate t he simplicity of the developed approach. (C) 1997 John Wiley & Sons, I nc.