In the RoboCup Middle Size League two teams of mobile robots play soccer against each other. During the game, agility, i.e. the ability to quickly change the direction of platform movements, is important to react or anticipate fast on the intention of opponents to efficiently perform maneuvers like ball shielding and interception. Therefore, high accelerations are desired which ideally would ask all wheels to contribute to traction in the target direction. However none of the current omnidirectional wheel-based robots in the league offers such a feature. Each pair of wheels can rotate independently about its suspension axis . The new configuration brings new challenges in control: the platform becomes kinematically nonholonomic due to the kinematic constraints around the pivot axes, but it is shown that in the context of the driving task the controller can keep the wheel configurations such that they can generate a force and torque in the directions needed by the task. Hereby, the restriction to minimize the position-error in its three degrees of freedom with respect to a predefined trajectory is relaxed by taking only the degrees of freedom relevant for the task into consideration. A cascaded control strategy is proposed that combines kinematic and dynamic control and also addresses the control-allocation problem. Compared to a full kinematic approach as typically applied on steerable wheeled systems, 2.3 times higher translational and 1.8 times higher angular velocity are demonstrated. For the translational acceleration and angular acceleration, improvement factors of 2.7 and 3.2 are achieved, respectively. The platform made a successful debut during the RoboCup Portuguese Open 2019, showing the robustness of the proposed approach.


    Access

    Download


    Export, share and cite



    Title :

    Dynamic control of steerable wheeled mobile platforms applied to an eight-wheeled RoboCup Middle Size League soccer robot



    Publication date :

    2021-12-01


    Remarks:

    Houtman , W , Lopez , C , Wang , S , Ketels , A , Bruyninckx , H P J & van de Molengraft , M J G R 2021 , ' Dynamic control of steerable wheeled mobile platforms applied to an eight-wheeled RoboCup Middle Size League soccer robot ' , Mechatronics , vol. 80 , 102693 . https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mechatronics.2021.102693



    Type of media :

    Article (Journal)


    Type of material :

    Electronic Resource


    Language :

    English


    Classification :

    DDC:    629



    Distributed active traction control system applied to the RoboCup middle size league

    Almeida, José / Dias, André / Sequeira, João et al. | BASE | 2013

    Free access

    Newton: A High Level Control Humanoid Robot for the RoboCup Soccer KidSize League

    Perico, Danilo H. / Silva, Isaac J. / Vilão Junior, Claudio O. et al. | Springer Verlag | 2015


    THREE-WHEELED MOBILE ROBOT

    SCHLEE KEITH | European Patent Office | 2016

    Free access

    Guy eight-wheeled lorry

    Engineering Index Backfile | 1931


    Software control of an eight wheeled-legged hybrid robot

    Paisley, Richard | BASE | 2010

    Free access