Investigation of The Effects of Contact Forces Acting on Rollers Of a Mecanum Wheeled Robot

Abstract

In this study, the effects of contact forces on the rollers of a mecanum wheeled robot are investigated. Modeling structures are constructed for the cases of single and multiple contact forces. A simulation environment is developed to examine these two cases. A theoretical model is proposed in order to reflect reality in the simulation environment. It is shown that single contact force assumption generates vertical vibration in a mecanum wheeled robot which is never desired in a real application. It is also demonstrated that adding more contact forces on a roller of a mecanum wheel's model decreases the transition distance between the rollers and thus creates smaller vibrations. An experimental setup, containing a four wheeled mecanum robot, is designed and built, and used for performing experiments to make verifications. Reference trajectory, simulation results obtained using single and multiple contact force cases and the experimental results are presented together to make comparisons. The details of the model proposed, simulation environment developed, experimental system designed and the results obtained are given in this paper.