Mecanum Wheels Research Articles

Experiment for measuring position error in a mobile robot with mecanum wheel

Experiment for measuring position error in a mobile robot with mecanum wheel

Mechatronic Design of a Four-Wheel drive mobile robot and differential steering

This paper presents, the development of an autonomous mobile robot with a four-wheel drive and differential locomotion. The mobile robot was developed in the Machines and Industrial Equipment Department from the Engineering Faculty of Sibiu. The main purpose of developing this type of mobile platform was the ability to transport different types of cargo either in industrial spaces or on rough terrain. Another important objective was that this platform could be driven in confined or tight spaces where a high degree of manoeuvrability is necessary. The great advantage of this type of mobile platform is the ability to navigate through narrow spaces due to the type of locomotion implemented. The fact that the robot has four driving wheels gives it the ability to travel on rough surfaces and easily bypass obstacles. Another great advantage of the developed mobile robot is that it has a reconfigurable structure. The drivetrain is interchangeable, it can adopt both classic wheels and Mecanum wheels. The first part of the paper presents some general aspects concerning mobile robots and two types of traction wheels used in mobile robotic structures. Subsequently, the paper presents the steps taken in the development of the mobile wheeled platform. At the end of the paper, the electronic part that will be implemented in the structure of the robot is described. The command and control of the entire mobile platform will be described in some future work.

전방향 가변 지지 메커니즘의 기구학 및 모의 해석 검증

In recent years, with increasing levels of e-commerce, the use of mobile robots in logistics has increased significantly. The most common driving mechanism for mobile robots is the differential type, but the omnidirectional type mechanism, too, is widely used due to its high maneuverability in crowded environments. Meanwhile, studies on a variable footprint mechanism (VFM) have been conducted to improve the maneuverability and driving stability of mobile robots. The extant VFMs offer some advantages, but they also have some limitations such as limited motion range due to structural singularity and complex controller design due to highly coupled parameters in kinematics. In this paper, an omnidirectional variable footprint mechanism (OVFM) is proposed to overcome these limitations. The proposed OVFM is designed with a diamond-shaped link structure that maximizes the motion range without singularity and a synchronized drive chain to achieve variable motion. The kinematic model of the proposed OVFM is mathematically derived, and it is demonstrated that the parameters related to VFM are only coupled to the rotation of the mobile robot, which could simplify controller design. The kinematic model is verified using the dynamics simulation tool RecurDyn in two different scenarios (one for variable motion under the static condition and the other for variable motion under the dynamic condition). The results indicate that the proposed kinematic model can be used to predict the motion of OVFM with acceptable errors that originate from the inherent nature of slip and vibration of Mecanum wheels.

Desain Robot Holonomic berbasis Roda Mecanum dengan Arm Manipulator

Movement systems of a mobile robot in an industry generally use the concept of differential drive or ackerman steering. However, both methods tend to have low mobility. This paper proposes an industrial mobile robot design with a holonomic concept using mecanum wheels to maneuver in all directions with better mobility. As a commonly used robot in the industrial field, an arm manipulator is combined with a mobile robot. The mobile robot and arm manipulator's mechanical design is made using software inventor and utilizing acrylic as its base material. The electronic design of the robot is created using Eagle software. After the robot manufacturing is complete, then a user interface is made using the processing IDE. Several robot tests are conducted to ensure that the designed robot runs appropriately. From the functional test results, parts of the robot can run well. The smallest error obtained is 5 cm for the robot heading test, and the most significant error is 20 cm. The testing of a servo motor, which is the arm manipulator's primary actuator, showed the highest error of only 2 degrees. Besides, the gripper of the arm manipulator can also hold objects properly.

Velocity Control of an Omnidirectional Wheeled Mobile Robot Using Computed Voltage Control with Visual Feedback: Experimental Results

In this paper, we propose a novel computed voltage based control law for an omnidirectional wheeled mobile robot equipped with four mecanum wheels. First, the dynamical model for the mechanical part is originally introduced by means of the Euler-Lagrange formulation. The motion constraints are added to the dynamic model using the Lagrange multipliers. Then, the dynamic model is completed by incorporating the dynamics of the actuators. Therefore, the dynamical model input signals are the armature voltage of the motors. The control law requires only the feedback of position and velocity of the whole robot, unlike most controllers in the literature that also need wheel speed feedback. The position and velocity are obtained by means of a multicam vision system, so measurements from motor encoders are not needed. A high-order sliding modes differentiator is included to estimate linear and angular velocities in a finite time. A stability proof is presented by means of the direct Lyapunov method, and furthermore, an analysis about parametric uncertainties in the mechanical parameters is introduced. The experimental results validate the theoretical proposal and show the good performance of the approach.

Atlas motion platform split-axle mecanum wheel design

The Atlas motion platform was conceptually introduced in 2005 as a 2.90 m diameter thin-walled composite sphere housing a cockpit. Three active mecanum wheels provide three linearly independent torque inputs enabling the sphere to enjoy a 100% dexterous reachable workspace with unbounded rotations about any axis. Three linearly independent translations of the sphere centre, decoupled from the orientation workspace, are provided by a translational three degree-of-freedom platform. Small-scale and half-scale demonstrators introduced in 2005 and 2009, respectively, gave us the confidence needed to begin the full-scale design. Actuation and control of the Atlas full-scale design is nearing completion; however, resolution of several details have proven extremely elusive. The focus of this paper is on the design path of the 24 passive mecanum wheels. The 12 passive wheels below the equator of the sphere help distribute the static and dynamic loads, while 12 passive wheels above the equator, attached to a pneumatically actuated halo, provide sufficient downward force so that the normal force between the three active wheel contact patches and sphere surface enable effective torque transfer. This paper details the issues associated with the original twin-hub passive wheels and the resolution of those issues with the current split-axle design. Results of static and dynamic load tests are discussed.

Dynamic simulation model for different type of wheeled mobile robotic drives on leveled surface

Dimensions of wheel base, payload weight and geometry, and type of drive configuration are some of the major factors to be consider during prototyping of a mobile robotic drive. For analysing the effect of such factors, a dynamic simulation model valid for any drive configuration using simple, omni or mecanum wheels is discussed in this paper. Sub-systems to take into account the inertia, motor characteristics normal force, friction force and wheel slip are discussed. Preliminary simulation results for path anticipation, for a control algorithm, for a four wheels omni drive robot with uneven mass distribution and variation of normal force due to acceleration of the robot are also shown in this paper. The simulation model is developed in Simulink/MATLAB.

Prototype development of mecanum wheels mobile robot: A review

This paper provides the review and prototype development of mecanum wheels mobile robot (MWMR). Nowadays, there is a high market demand for a wheeled machine or wheeled robot for various applications. The ability to move in any direction without altering even a single wheel makes this type of wheel useful for driving, especially in a narrowed or confined space. Various styles of implementing MWMR are discussed in this paper. The kinematic derivation and dynamic modelling are also presented. Characteristically, mecanum wheels face traditional mobile application issues like jerking and slippage, contributing to low positioning accuracy and repeatability. Besides, environmental factors like disturbance and uncertainty also contribute to these issues. The control strategies in previous research have been reviewed and presented in this paper to reduce the effect. Finally, a low-cost prototype of MWMR was developed as an experimental platform for future study.

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

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.

Exploration of Indoor Barrier-Free Plane Intelligent Lofting System Combining BIM and Multi-Sensors

Lofting is an essential part of construction projects and the high quality of lofting is the basis of efficient construction. However, the most common method of lofting currently which uses the total station in a multi-person cooperative way consumes much manpower and time. With the rapid development of remote sensing and robot technology, using robots instead of manpower can effectively solve this problem, but few scholars study this. How to effectively combine remote sensing and robots with lofting is a challenging problem. In this paper, we propose an intelligent lofting system for indoor barrier-free plane environment, and design a high-flexibility, low-cost autonomous mobile robot platform based on single chip microcomputer, Micro Electro Mechanical Systems-Inertial Measurement Unit (MEMS-IMU), wheel encoder, and magnetometer. The robot also combines Building Information Modeling (BIM) laser lofting instrument and WIFI communication technology to get its own position. To ensure the accuracy of localization, the kinematics model of Mecanum wheel robot is built, and Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) is also used to fuse multi-sensor data. It can be seen from the final experimental results that this system can significantly improve lofting efficiency and reduce manpower.

Fuzzy-Based Fault-Tolerant Control for Omnidirectional Mobile Robot

The motion-planning problem is well known in robotics; it aims to find a free-obstacle path from a starting point to a destination. To make use of actuation generosity and the fuzzy fast response behavior compared to other non-linear controllers, a fuzzy-based fault-tolerant control for an omnidirectional mobile robot with four Mecanum wheels is proposed. The objective is to provide the robot with an online scheme to control the robot motion while moving toward the final destination with avoiding obstacles in its environment and providing an adaptive solution for a combination of one or combination of the wheel’s faults. The faults happen when the wheel does not receive the control command signal from the controller; in this case, the robot can rotate freely due to the interaction with the ground. The principle of fuzzy-based control proposed by Sugeno is used to develop the motion controller. The motion controller consists of two main controllers: the Run-To-Goal, and the obstacle-avoidance controller. The outputs of these two controllers are superposed to get the net potential force on the robot. By its simplicity, the fuzzy controller can be suitable for online applications (online path planning in our case). To the best of our knowledge, this is the first fuzzy-based fault-tolerant controller for an omnidirectional robot. The proposed controller is tested by a set of simulation scenarios to check the proposed fuzzy tolerant control. Kuka OmniRob is used as an example of the omnidirectional robot in these simulation runs. Matlab is used to build the fuzzy-based fault-tolerant control, and the 3D simulation is developed on the CoppeliaSim software. We examine five distinct scenarios, each one with a different fault state. In all scenarios, the proposed algorithm could control the robot to reach its final destination with the absence and presence of an obstacle in the workspace, despite actuator faults, without crossing the workspace boundaries.

Path Tracking Simulation of a Wheeled Mobile Robot with Three Mecanum Wheels

This paper presents a study of wheeled mobile robot WMR path tracking by presenting the kinematic model of holonomic wheeled mobile robot with three mecanum controlled wheels. The advantage of mecanum wheels usage is to make the mobile robot movement in lateral and longitudinal directions smooth and to improve the tracking ability to travel in every direction under any orientation. This proposed type of WMR has three actuated input coordinates (angular velocities of the mecanum wheels) and three generalized output coordinates (robot linear translation along x, y axes and the robot orientation). The kinematic models of the WMR are based on a functional relation among configuration variables and their derivatives. It is a known fact that the WMR poses can be achieved in the configuration space but the path to reach these poses has complex step in the consideration. The mobility capability in the proposed design of WMR makes it suitable for different types of applications. The contribution in this work is the initiative to obtain the mathematical models of inverse and forward kinematics in order to analyze a new design of WMR with three mecanum wheels to simplify the task implementation of the robot by obtaining the suitable path to reach the mobile robot target. It has been taken in consideration that, the WMR motion is assumed as a pure rolling without any slipping. Simulation example results presented in this work show the proposed control algorithm applied on two different cases of path tracking (circular path, infinity path) and the effect of WMR wheels angular velocities on the robot body velocities and robot position errors. The results show a good performance in minimizing the positioning errors during the implementation of its task.

Kinematic modeling and control of mobile robot for large-scale workpiece machining

Safety and reliability are significant in the sense of robotic machining for large-scale workpieces. In this article, a control scheme is proposed to ensure the safe motion of the mobile robot. Screw theory is used to analyze the motion of the mobile robot. The mobile platform with Mecanum wheels can be considered as a mechanism with four driven screws in series. An auxiliary reference position of the mobile platform is calculated based on the kinematic model, and the motion of the mobile platform and robot arm can be decoupled to handle its redundant degrees of freedom. Constant speed control is investigated to reduce the interaction force between the robot and platform. Experiments are conducted on the mobile robotic machining task for a large-scale wind turbine blade. The mobile robot moves steadily and smoothly owing to the constant speed control with an auxiliary target.

Design and control of a motor wheel system controlled by smartphone

The purpose of this project is to design a wheel system controlled by smartphone for multiple utilisations and determine its efficient control. The motor wheel system is equipped with four mecanum wheels with ten movements: forward, reverse, left, right, clockwise, counter-clockwise, and four on diagonal. PID control which is a closed-loop control was implemented to regulate the speed of the wheel system. The system is equipped with Bluetooth and a mobile application was developed as its user interface. Two control mode was developed in this project which is the precision mode where the user controls the wheel system manually using the smartphone as a control panel and another mode is the following mode where smartphone internal gyroscope and accelerometer are combined together to move the wheel system automatically with respect to the user body movements. CAD model of the design is developed in Solidworks and finite element analysis is done using CAE. FEA analysis is studied and discussed with focus on the critical location of the design. The full-size prototype of the design is developed and tested in normal running conditions. The system is proven to be reliable to carry loads and can be controlled efficiently by smartphone.

The Study of Design and Manufacture of Individually Fork-Shaped Mecanum Wheel for Omni-Directional Moving Robot

The Study of Design and Manufacture of Individually Fork-Shaped Mecanum Wheel for Omni-Directional Moving Robot

A Study on the Deflection of Roller Axis of an Improved Mecanum Wheel Using the Castigliano Theorem

A Study on the Deflection of Roller Axis of an Improved Mecanum Wheel Using the Castigliano Theorem

Multifunctional Rendering Swarm Robot

Multifunctional Rendering Swarm robot make a huge impact in this present busy world . This robot works perfectly as an surveillance robot as well as an personal assisting robot for household purposes and most of the work that carried on is swarm mechanism of the personal assisting robots. This have dual mechanism for moment such as mecanum wheel as well as Klann mechanism to the six legs to overcome the hard terrain landscapes in particular house surroundings , with and arm mechanism to pick and place of assigned objects. This robot can be controlled by voice as well as limited hand gestures to perform tasks which use text to speech and speech to text, Convolution Neural Networking (CNN) respectively . This robot have a 3600 night vision camera for surveillance at night times through OpenCV . This will be doing parallel jobs such as talking to you as an assistant , cleaning house , and many more . as the advancement in the world is not up-to the real time applications, this helps in interfacing future and present situations to get updated. As swarm robots, this will be updating its status to the fellow robots and assigning particular task to divide and do faster which depends on deep learning and artificial intelligence. All this can be acknowledged and examined by any nominee of the user who are at distant places in case of any emergency and respond as a speech modulation talk back , digital display available for commands display or any work been processed, time consuming smart work is been done through this robot. This is also equipped with the sanitizer for the people hygiene and safety. This robots can also be used in military, schools, software industries and many more industries.

Collinear Mecanum Drive: Modeling, Analysis, Partial Feedback Linearization, and Nonlinear Control

The collinear Mecanum drive (CMD) is a novel robot locomotion system, capable of generating omnidirectional motion while simultaneously dynamically balancing, achieved using a collinear arrangement of three or more Mecanum wheels. The CMD has a significantly thinner ground footprint than existing omnidirectional locomotion methods, which does not need to be enlarged with increasing robot height as to avoid toppling during acceleration or external disturbance. This combination of omnidirectional manoeuvrability and a thin ground footprint allows for the creation of tall robots that are able to navigate through much narrower gaps between obstacles than existing omnidirectional locomotion methods. This allows for greater manoeuvrability in confined and cluttered environments, such as that encountered in the personal service and automated warehousing robotics sectors. This article derives the kinematics and dynamics models of the CMD, analyzes controllability and accessibility, and determines the degree to which a CMD can be linearized by feedback. A partial feedback linearization is then performed, and three practically useful nonlinear controllers are derived using a backstepping design approach, all with convergence and stability guarantees for the fully coupled nonlinear model. These are demonstrated both in simulation and on a real-world CMD experimental prototype.

Q-bot: heavy object carriage robot for in-house logistics based on universal vacuum gripper

Q-bot is the human-sized carriage robot for lifting heavy weight objects of in-house logistics, such as storehouse and convenience store. The main feature of Q-bot is the adhesion mechanism beneath the foot, called the turnover prevention Universal Vacuum Gripper (in short TP UVG) that holds its body for turnover prevention and self-weight compensation. Turnover prevention is one of the key technologies of in-house logistic robot for effective use of it. Self-weight compensation is another clue for the robot to achieve the labor work in narrow space. TP UVG is achieved both functions by adhering to uneven ground. The other function of Q-bot is multiple objects graspability based on two-sized Universal Vacuum Gripper by dual-armed manipulation. Q-bot also has omnidirectional movability based on mecanum wheels. In this research, we will report on the development of Q-bot and experiments to prevent the robot from falling when it grabs a heavy object while attached to the ground. We also report Q-bot demonstrations of Future Convenience-Store Challenge in the World Robot Summit 2018.

Moving target tracking method for unmanned aerial vehicle/unmanned ground vehicle heterogeneous system based on AprilTags

Using the characteristics of unmanned aerial vehicle/unmanned ground vehicle, heterogeneous systems can accomplish many complex tasks cooperatively. Moving target tracking is an important basis for the relative positioning and formation maintenance of heterogeneous cooperative systems. This paper first introduces the unmanned aerial vehicle/unmanned ground vehicle collaborative tracking task and heterogeneous system. In order to maintain the original stability of unmanned aerial vehicle, a control method based on SBUS protocol to simulate remote control is proposed. About unmanned ground vehicle with Mecanum wheel, a detailed description of control method is designed. For the problems of real-time performance and occlusion, a tracking scheme based on AprilTag identification is studied. The scheme tracks the Tag target in the case of no occlusion. When occlusion occurs, the scheme tracks the color feature around the Tag. The accuracy of the tracking algorithm and the problem of occlusion are greatly improved. Finally, the scheme is applied to the heterogeneous systems. Simulation and experimental results show that the proposed method is suitable for unmanned aerial vehicle/unmanned ground vehicle heterogeneous system to perform the collaborative tracking task.