Kinematic Bilateral Teleoperation of Wheeled Mobile Robots Subject to Longitudinal Slippage

With the widespread use of wheeled mobile robots (WMR) in various applications, new challenges have arisen in terms of designing its control system. One of such challenges is caused by wheel slippage. This paper proposes a new method for haptic teleoperation control of a WMR with longitudinal slippage (not including sliding). In this teleoperation system, the mobile robot’s linear velocity follows the master haptic interface’s position. The proposed teleoperation controller also includes an acceleration-level control law for the mobile robot such that the velocity loss caused by slippage is compensated for. Information about the magnitude and timing of slippage is displayed to the human operator through haptic (force) feedback. Despite the functional benefits of displaying slippage information as haptic feedback to the user, there are system stability related concerns that have been addressed using the proposed controller. Experiments of the proposed controller demonstrate that it results in stable bilateral teleoperation with a satisfactory tracking performance.