Integrated Control and Navigation for Omni-directional Mobile Robot Based on Trajectory Linearization

In this paper, an integrated navigation and control for omni-directional mobile robot is developed. Both control and navigation algorithms are based on trajectory linearization. The robot control is based on trajectory linearization control (TLC), in which an open-loop kinematic inversion and a closed-loop linear time varying (LTV) stabilizer are combined together to provide robust and accurate trajectory tracking performance. The LTV stabilizer is designed along the nominal trajectory provided by the kinematic inversion. The robot navigation is based on a sensor fusion using nonlinear Kalman filter which is also designed along the nominal trajectory. The sensor fusion combines onboard sensor and vision system measurements together, and provides reliable and accurate location and orientation measurements. Gating technology is employed to remove the inaccurate vision measurement. A real-time hardware-in-the- loop (HIL) simulation system was built to verified the proposed integrated control and navigation. Test results show that the proposed method improves robot location and orientation measurements reliability and accuracy, thus it improves the robot controller performance significantly.