One of the most important reasons for the popularity of mobile robots in industrial manufacturing is their capability to move and operate freely. In order for the robots to perform to the expectations in manufacturing, their position and orientation must be determined accurately. In addition, there is a strong tendency to grant more autonomy to robots when they operate in hazardous or unknown e...

This paper deals with the structure of the kinematic models of wheeled mobile robots (WMR). A wheeled mobile robot here considered as a planer rigid body that rides on an arbitrary number of wheels. In this paper it is shown that, for a large class of possible configurations of wheels, five types of configurations can be done namely i) fixed standard wheels, ii) steerable standard wheels, iii) ...

−− A generic kinematic control, which is directly applicable to any type of wheeled mobile robot, is proposed in this work. Firstly, it is presented the kinematic models of the four common types of wheels (fixed, centered orientable, castor and Swedish) a classification of wheeled mobile robots. Afterwards, it is proposed a kinematic control scheme with three nested loops: dynamic, kinematic an...

We wish to organize movable objects with teams of mobile robots in dynamic, unstructured environments. We describe a distributed heterogeneous system of robots that cooperate to achieve this task. We describe on-line algorithms for pushing, reorienting, \grasping", and placing objects in dynamic, unstruc-tured environments with wheeled robots. We also describe on-line algorithms for \pulling" a...

The paper considers a specific class of wheeled mobile robots referred to as mobile wheeled pendulums (MWP). Robots pertaining to this class are composed of two wheels rotating about a central body. The main feature of the MWP pertains to the central body, which can rotate about the wheel axes. As such motion is undesirable, the problem of the stabilization of the central body in MWP is crucial...

Swedish wheeled mobile robots have remarkable mobility properties allowing them to rotate and translate at the same time. Being holonomic systems, their kinematics model results in the possibility of designing separate and independent position and heading trajectory tracking control laws. Nevertheless, if these control laws should be implemented in the presence of unaccounted actuator saturatio...

Although the wheeled locomotion proved to be very efficient on smooth grounds, it still encounters great difficulties in natural environments, where the ground is subject to wide variations in term of geometry (irregular surface, presence of obstacles...) and material properties (cohesion, grip condition...). This chapter presents recent developments and original systems that improve the capaci...

The stability of the internal dynamics of a wheeled mobile robot is analyzed. It is shown that the wheeled mobile robot exhibits unstable internal dynamics when moving backwards. Most control methods of wheeled mobile robots are designed based on input-output relations. Since the internal dynamics are not represented in input-output relations, stability properties of the internal dynamics are g...

In this study, we work with a heterogeneous swarm of wheeled and aerial robots. We present a selforganised approach inspired by the aggregation behaviour of cockroaches that allows each aerial robot to form a dedicated group of wheeled robots of a particular size. Our approach is based on simple probabilistic rules, but still proves robust and flexible. Different groups can be formed in paralle...

Applications of wheeled mobile robots have recently extended to service robots for the handicapped or the aged and industrial mobile robots working in various environments. The most popular wheeled mobile robots are equipped with two independent driving wheels. Since these robots possess 2 degrees-of-freedom (DOFs), they can rotate about any point, but cannot perform holonomic motion including ...