<title>Steering control system for a mobile robot</title>

Abstract

Automated guided vehicles (AGVs) have many potential applications in manufacturing, medicine, space and defense. The purpose of this paper is to describe the design of a steering mechanism for an autonomous mobile robot. The steering mechanism replaces a manually turned rack and pinion arrangement with a crank mechanism driven by a linear actuator that in turn is powered by a brushless dc motor. The system was modeled, analyzed, and redesigned to meet the requirements. A 486 computer through a 3-axis motion controller supervises the steering control. The steering motor is a brushless dc motor powered by three phase signals. It is run in current loop mode. The steering control system is supervised by a personal computer through a multi-axis motion controller. Testing of these systems has been done in the lab as well as on an outside test track with positive results.