The Kinematics of Wheeled Mobile Robots With Dual-Wheel Transmission Units

Abstract

The dual-wheel transmission unit, an innovative driving mechanism for wheeled mobile robots, was introduced elsewhere. In this paper, we discuss wheeled mobile robots with such units, supplied with a novel suspension to keep the wheel-ground contact in spite of the irregularities of the floor. We derive closed-form solutions and constraints pertaining to the direct and inverse-kinematics problems of these robots; the constraints reveal the mobility of the robots at hand. Furthermore, we provide an algorithm for the trajectory tracking of the same robots that relies on a novel technique, which is termed the companion-curve method.