Design of hierarchical motion stabilizing controller of tracked mobile robot in three dimensional space

In this paper, stabilizing control of tracked mobile robot in 3-D space was presented. Firstly, models of major modules of TMR were established. Next, to reveal the mechanism of disturbances applied on TMR, two kinds of representative disturbances (slope and general disturbances in yaw motion) were discussed in depth. Consequently, an attempting PID method was employed to compensate the impacts of disturbances and simulation results proved the validity for disturbance incited by slope force, but revealed the lack for general disturbance on yaw motion. Finally, a hierarchical fuzzy controller combined with PID controller was proposed. In lower level, there were two PID controllers to compensate the disturbance of slope force, and on top level, the fuzzy logic controller was employed to correct the yaw motion error based on the differences between the model and the real TMR, which was able to guide the TMR maintain on the stable state. Simulation results demonstrated the excellent effectiveness of the newly designed controller.