Behavior Control For An Articulated Tracked Mobile Robot Climbing Obstacles Autonomously

Research in mobile robot navigation has demonstrated some success in navigating a flat world. However, algorithms which analyze control in environments with typical obstacles in order to climb obstacles have had very little success due to the complexity of the task. To meet the military and industry need of robots to climb obstacles effectively and efficiently, this thesis aims to design a control strategy of obstacle climbing for an articulated tracked mobile robot to climb stair obstacles autonomously based on reactive behavior.First of all, the articulated tracked mobile robot developed by laboratory was transformed properly to be capable for autonomous stair climbing. With the structural parameters of the robot and the stair being considered, an environment perceptive system, which contains a rotatable LIDAR and an IMU, was designed for robot climbing the obstacles. Referring to the perceptive system, a motion control system was designed and a kinematical model of the robot was established.Secondly, this thesis proposed an algorithm based on the LIDAR’s data characteristics to detect the structural parameters of the obstacle in each stage of the obstacle-climbing and calculate the relative location of the robot and the obstacle. This thesis also designed a method based on the IMU to get the yaw of the robot during the obstacle-climbing stage. Thus the relative position of the robot and the obstacle can be gotten in real time.Thirdly, according to the relative position information, this thesis designed a control strategy for the robot motion planning before the obstacle-climbing, a reactive control method for the swing arm during the obstacle-climbing and a PID-based control method of the robot yaw, to achieve autonomous obstacle-climbing.Finally, this thesis established the model of the articulated tracked mobile robot and the stair environment in Labview and did a series of kinematical simulation to demonstrate the autonomous obstacle-climbing strategy proposed in this thesis. According to the simulation, the robot can climb the stairs effectively and efficiently by using this control strategy.