| The development of a planetary rover for use on the moon or on Mars has generated further interest in autonomous vehicles which are capable of moving through a complicated terrain with minimal supervision. One approach for enhancing autonomy is a dynamics based controller which could ensure motion stability and avoid catastrophic events. This approach allows the monitoring of wheel to ground contact forces which is helpful in avoiding slippage and tipping. As a prelude to more sophisticated tests in a three dimensional environment with random obstacles, a tricycle configuration mobile robot has been built and used to verify the performance of dynamics based control on a flat surface. This controller works by taking into consideration the forces involved in moving the vehicle and therefore can produce better control than controllers which consider only kinematics or simplified dynamics of the system. The work presented here describes the controller of a mobile robot based on dynamics and discusses design aspects of the robot used in this type of system. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)... |
