A generic kinematic formulation for wheeled mobile robots

Abstract

This article presents a generic kinematic formulation and a procedure developed to deduce the kinematics of wheeled mobile robots (WMRs), also known in the literature as driverless ground vehicles, automated guided vehicles (AGVs), and autonomous transit vehicles (ATVs). The generic formulation to deduce the kinematics of WMRs with various combinations of driving and steering wheels is obtained by making use of the transformation approach and modifying the kinematic formulations developed for WMRs with inclined steering columns. A general expression for the angular velocity of wheel slip is derived to extend the suitability of the formulations for WMRs with various combinations of driving and steering wheels. It is illustrated that the procedure developed provides the final form of the kinematic equations by providing only the kinematic parameters of the WMR, including the type of wheels employed for the generic model. This approach is useful to automate the modeling procedure to obtain either symbolic expressions or numerical values for WMR kinematics. Several case studies are presented to illustrate the simplicity of the developed approach. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.