Advanced Search

Journal Navigation

Journal Home

Subscriptions

Archive

Contact Us

Table of Contents

Sign In to gain access to subscriptions and/or personal tools.
The International Journal of Robotics Research
This Article
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow References
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to Saved Citations
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Right arrow Request Reprints
Right arrow Add to My Marked Citations
Citing Articles
Right arrow Citing Articles via Google Scholar
Right arrow Citing Articles via Scopus
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Jung, M.-I.
Right arrow Articles by Kim, J.-H.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Complore   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us   Add to Digg   Add to Reddit   Add to Technorati   Add to Twitter  
What's this?

Development of a Fault-Tolerant Omnidirectional Wheeled Mobile Robot Using Nonholonomic Constraints

Myung-Iin Jung

Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) Kusong-dong, Yusing-gu, Taejon-shi, 305-701 Republic of Korea

Jong-Hwan Kim

Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) Kusong-dong, Yusing-gu, Taejon-shi, 305-701 Republic of Korea, johkim{at}vivaldi.kaist.ac.kr

Robots used in hazardous environments need a high degree of mobility with good precision and robustness to actuator failures. In this paper, a novel gear train is proposed to satisfy the requirement for such a mechanism. The gear train is developed based on the following principles: (i) the mechanism is omnidirectional for a high degree of mobility, (ii) the mechanism uses only conventional tirewheels for high precision, and (iii) the mechanism uses only three motors for no actuation redundancy; at the same time, it has robustness to actuator failure so that when any one of the motors is not functioning properly, regardless of which one is not and regardless of the configuration at the moment of failure, the posture is controllable with the other two working actuators. By virtue of the proposed gear train, in an actuator failure, the entire structure becomes similar to a differentially driven two-wheeled mobile robot subject to nonholonomic constraints. The nonholonomic constraints, inherent in the mechanism and stemming from an actuator failure, are crucial to maintain the controllability of the robot posture when omnidirectional mobility is lost due to actuator failure. Controllability is proved and control laws are presented for both the omnidirectional mode, when all three motors are functioning, and the non-omnidirectional mode, when one of the motors is locked due to a failure. The omnidirectional mobility and robustness to an actuator failure is verified by experimental results.

Key Words: omnidirectional mechanism • special gear train • nonholonomic constraints • robustness to actuator failures

The International Journal of Robotics Research, Vol. 21, No. 5-6, 527-539 (2002)
DOI: 10.1177/027836402761393379
Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Complore Complore   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to Technorati Technorati   Add to Twitter Twitter    What's this?