Acceleration compensation using a Stewart platform on a mobile robot

Abstract

Transporting an object on a mobile platform always transfers accelerations to this object. In many cases this is undesirable, so a compensation would be helpful. There are passive systems, but they can only react and have no other use like manipulating. This paper presents a solution for both compensation of accelerations and precise and powerful manipulation. In order to achieve a compensation a Stewart platform is mounted on top of a mobile robot. Usually a Stewart platform is used to generate accelerations. In this application the acceleration vector of the robot is inverted and sent to the filter, which performs the platform motion depending on the robot movement. This filter handles all six degrees of freedom, so every movement can be taken into account, if it is determined by acceleration or inclination sensors. Furthermore, this combination is also a very precise docking system, since the Stewart platform can easily correct the uncertainty in the robot position.