The kinematics for redundantly actuated omnidirectional mobile robots

Abstract

Omnidirectional mobile robots have been popularly employed in several application areas. However, the kinematics and singularity analysis for these systems have not been clearly identified, especially for the redundantly actuated case, which is common in current omnidirectional mobile robots. In light of this fact, this article introduces two different kinematic approaches for a typical omnidirectional mobile robot having three caster wheels, and examines singularity configurations of such systems. Then, a singularity-free load-distribution scheme for a redundantly actuated three-wheeled omnidirectional mobile robot is proposed. Through simulation, several advantages of the redundantly actuated mobile robot (singularity avoidance, input-load saving, and exploiting several subtasks) are presented. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.