Cooperative Motion Control and Sensing Architecture in Compliant Framed Modular Mobile Robots

A novel motion control and sensing architecture for a two-axle compliant framed wheeled modular mobile robot (CFMMR) is proposed in this paper. The CFMMR is essentially a cooperative mobile robotic system with complex physical constraints and highly nonlinear interaction forces. The architecture combines a kinematic controller for coordinating motion and providing reference commands, robust dynamic controllers for following these commands and rejecting disturbances, and a sensor fusion system designed to provide accurate relative posture estimates. Requirements for each of these subsystems and their respective interconnections are defined in this paper in order to optimize system performance. Experimental results compare performance of the proposed architecture to sub-optimal configurations. Results derived from seven groups of experiments based upon 35 individual tests validate superiority of the architecture.