Implementation of Heading and Velocity Control Algorithms for Front Wheel Steered and Differential-Drive Robots

Abstract

In this paper, various algorithms are implemented
for both the front-wheel steered (Ackermann) as well as
differential drive robots. For the Ackermann Car-like robot, the
robot motion can be modelled using the steering angle as well as
the translational speeds whereas the differential drive (DD) robot
motion is described by its left and right wheel velocities. The
differential drive robot is a two-wheeled robotic system with two
independent actuators for controlling the velocities of each of the
two wheels with a common axis. For the testing of various heading
and velocity control algorithms, MATLAB as well as the Virtual
Robotic Experimentation Platform (V-REP) by Coppelia Robotics
was employed. All the controllers for each of the two robots were
implemented in MATLAB. For testing the performance of each
controller, a separate MATLAB script was written to interface
MATLAB with V-REP software utilizing various MATLAB
Remote API functions and various linear and non-linear
controllers were tested. For simulation, the models for both the
Ackermann and differential drive robots were utilized from builtin mobile robot library provided by the V-REP software