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Traction force estimator of tracked mobile robot supported by the back‐to‐back test
Author(s) -
Moriyama Shinichi
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
ieej transactions on electrical and electronic engineering
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.254
H-Index - 30
eISSN - 1931-4981
pISSN - 1931-4973
DOI - 10.1002/tee.22886
Subject(s) - slippage , torque , traction (geology) , mobile robot , bang bang robot , estimator , sprocket , tractive force , robot , control theory (sociology) , simulation , armature (electrical engineering) , computer science , engineering , robot kinematics , magnet , artificial intelligence , mathematics , mechanical engineering , physics , structural engineering , statistics , control (management) , thermodynamics
In a wheel‐type mobile robot driven by DC motors, an estimator for deriving the traction force from the armature currents is necessary in building the motion control system. When the mobile robot has chain tracks, however, the motion in itself is very complicated because of the slippage phenomenon and torque transmission loss occurring at the chain tracks. Hence, simplification of the estimator is essential for the real‐time motion control. This article introduces a testing method that may satisfy the demand. It consists of two steps. The first step is the back‐to‐back test with two DC motors that were connected directly in a mobile robot, or, with two mobile robots in which the chain tracks were faced parallel. One of the two DC motors or one of the two chain tracks is turned forcibly by another, that is, it operates as an electric brake. Through this test, the sprocket torque related to the traction force is formalized as a linear expression on the armature current. The second step is the running test that a mobile robot moves on a straight‐line path according to a step‐traveling command. The linear expression established at the first step is applied to an inverse calculation of the motion equation to estimate the traction force from the traveling speed data. The usefulness of this testing method is examined by experiments with small mobile robots available on the market. © 2019 Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.