Design, control, and performance of the weed 6 wheel robot in the UK MOD grand challenge

Arjun Nagendran, William Crowther, Martin Turner, Alexander Lanzon, Robert Richardson

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

A new locomotion method for unmanned (autonomous) ground vehicles (UGV) is proposed based around six independently driven wheels mounted on three separate modules. Each module is attached to the overall robot via a pivot point and capable of independently controlling its orientation and velocity. This configuration allows the UGV to perform maneuvers conventional vehicles cannot perform, and in particular to control the body orientation separately from the movement direction. The locomotion method is mathematically analyzed to develop appropriate control algorithms and to demonstrate the vehicle performance criteria. A vehicle was constructed according to the proposed configuration and experimentally tested in the UK Ministry Of Defense grand challenge. The performance of the developed locomotion schemes helped the robot make it to the finale of the competition. © 2013 Taylor & Francis and The Robotics Society of Japan.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)203-218
Number of pages15
JournalAdvanced Robotics
Volume28
Issue number4
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 16 Feb 2014

Keywords

  • autonomous ground vehicle
  • mobile robot design
  • robot control
  • robot motion analysis

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