The purpose of this chapter is to introduce, analyze, and compare the models of wheeled mobile robots (WMR) and to present several realizations and commonly encountered designs. The mobility of WMR is discussed on the basis of the kinematic constraints resulting from the pure rolling conditions at the contact points between the wheels and the ground. According to this discussion it is shown tha...

For their inherent stability and simplicity, wheeled robots are very common in robotics applications – but a major drawback of wheeled robots is their inability to navigate over large obstacles or steps without assistance. Active systems that have been designed for use on wheeled robots to lift the robot over a step – such as USU‟s T3 and Virginia Tech‟s IMPASS – are effective, but are limited ...

We formulate the kinematic equations-of-motion of wheeled mobile robots incorporating conuentionaI, omnidirectional, and ball wheels. While our approach parallels the kinematic modeling of stationary manipulators, we extend the methodology to accommodate such special characteristics of wheeled mobile robots as multiple closed-link chains, higher-pair contact points between a wheel and a surface...

This paper presents, analyzes and compares two different kinematic modeling methods for obtaining the kinematic model of general wheeled mobile robots. The two kinematic modeling methods are based on absolutely different concepts: on the one hand the constraints of each wheel and on the other the well known homogeneous transformation matrix theory. These methods are applied to the most common w...

The most relevant differences existing between wheeled and legged robots, from the point of view of the expected navigation tasks to be performed using each kind of locomotion, are reviewed. We propose a new framework for legged robot navigation that replaces many implicit assumptions usually made for wheeled robots by new ones that are better suited to legged robots. Based on this, specific te...

Over the last few years there have been great developments and improvements in the mobile robotics field, oriented to replace human operators especially in dangerous tasks, such as mine-sweeping operations, rescuing after earthquakes or other catastrophic events, fire-fighting operations, working inside nuclear power stations and exploration of unknown environments. Different locomotion systems...

We report here on a new technique to evaluate autonomous mobile robots built for exploring rugged terrain such as is found on planetary surfaces. The dynamics of both wheeled and legged robots interacting with deformable soil (sand) and obstacles are notoriously complex and nonlinear. This paper introduces a novel statistical methodology for the evaluation of such robots. We report on work in p...

Abstract: Self-balancing control is the basis for applications of two-wheeled robots. In order to improve the self-balancing of twowheeled robots, we propose a hierarchical reinforcement learning algorithm for controlling the balance of two-wheeled robots. After describing the subgoals of hierarchical reinforcement learning, we extract features for subgoals, define a feature value vector and it...

This paper surveys past and current designs of surface mobility systems lor planetary exploration i robots developed at JPL/Canech. Wheeled rovers are ! discussed in some detail, andxompared to new designs, such as legged and hopping robots, which are emerging as viable alternatives to wheeled mobility for specific applications. The paper discusses the main features of mobility designs and summ...

In this paper, the stable full-state tracking problem is investigated for nonholonomic wheeled mobile robots under output-tracking control laws. Dynamics of such wheeled mobile robots are nonholonomic and pose challenging problems for control design and stability analysis. The dynamics formulated in terms of full-state tracking errors offer some properties that allow better understanding of the...