Generalized Kinematics Modeling of Wheeled Mobile Robots

Abstract

The previous kinematic analysis of wheeled mobile robots(WMRs) is performed in an ad-hoc manner, while those of the robot manipulators are done in a consistent way using the coordinate system assignment and the homogeneous transformation matrix. This paper shows why the method for the robot manipulators cannot be used directly to the WMRs and proposes the method for the WMRs, which contains modeling the wheel with the Sheth-Uicker notation and the homogeneous transformation. The proposed method enable us to model the velocity kinematics of the WMRs in a consistent way. As an implementation of the proposed method, the Jacobian matrices were obtained for conventional steered wheel and non-steered wheel respectively and the forward and inverse velocity kinematic solutions were calculated fur a tricycle typed WMR. We hope that our proposed method comes to hold an equivalent roles for WMRs, as that of the manipulators does for the robot manipulators.