Visual dead-reckoning for motion control of a Mecanum-wheeled mobile robot

✍ Scribed by J.A Cooney; W.L Xu; G Bright

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 2004
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 344 KB
• Volume: 14
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0957-4158
• DOI: 10.1016/j.mechatronics.2003.09.002

✦ Synopsis

Given an omni-directional mobile platform using four Mecanum wheels requires further a capability to be programmed to achieve various motion behaviours and intelligence. This paper describes an undergraduate solution to the problem involving both hardware and software developments. With a path following behaviour as the aim, the research focused predominantly upon; sensors for dead-reckoning, motor drive, closed-loop feedback control, and microcontroller interfacing and programming. A four channel high power MOSFET and relay H-Bridge driver circuit board was designed for driving four motors. Two optical mice were attached to the front and rear of the robot giving positional feedback for closed-loop control and dead-reckoning for navigation. A Mitsubishi M16C/62 microcontroller was interfaced to these TTL compatible devices and subsequently programmed to implement various robotic behaviours. A closed-loop control scheme using three independent PID controllers was implemented to follow three degrees-of-freedom motions, i.e., x-and y-movement and rotation motions. The path following performance of the robot was tested in both openloop and closed-loop modes and the optical mice were found to be a promising but inexpensive sensor, providing dead-reckoning for robot motion control.