Analysis and modeling of slip for a five-wheeled mobile robot (WMR) in an uneven terrain

Effective traction and motion control of autonomous wheel mobile robots (WMR) require a precise knowledge of the relationship between three major classes of variables including those of: the vehicle (robot), the terrain and the interaction at the interface. This paper presents a model and analysis of the relationship between wheel slip (s) and rotation angle (θ). Unconstrained nonlinear optimization of slip with respect to rotation angle is performed in MATLAB using Newton-Raphson iterative method. We also propose a method of wheel slip estimation for a five wheeled mobile robot through comparing the odometric measurements of the powered wheels with that of a fifth non-powered wheel.