The development of quasiholonomic wheeled robots

Abstract

We report the holonomy analysis of three wheeled mobile robots. Two of these, Vuton II and Nomad, have full mobility and are claimed by their inventors to be holonomic. We show that, in fact, they are nonholonomic. Nevertheless, conditions are given under which these robots can be designed for quasiholonomy, a concept introduced elsewhere and recalled here. The third robot, Quasimoro, has a mobility of two and is unconditionally quasiholonomic. It is shown that if the wheel mechanism of a robot with full mobility is designed in such a way that the platform is much heavier than the wheel mechanism, then the underlying mathematical models are free of the nonholonomy term.