Research on Modeling and Coordinated Driving Control for Wheeled Mobile Robot on Complex Terrain

Lunar rover is a special kind of wheeled mobile robot for deep space exploration mission. On the moon, the soft weathered layers, as well as different sizes of rocks and craters, are distributed disorderly and unsystematically. Facing such kinds of complex environments and terrains, the mobility and terrain trafficability performance of the lunar rover will be threatened to a certain extent. The SpaceDyn toolbox is adopted to build the six-wheeled lunar rover kinematics relation and to calculate the kinetic parameters. Then the lunar rover dynamics model can be achieved. The wheel-soil interaction model on soft terrain is established based on terramechanics theory. Finally, the coordinated driving controller for the six-wheeled lunar rover on complex soft terrain is designed according to the above model. Numerical calculation and computer simulations are performed to verify the performance of the designed controller on soft terrain. Results indicate that the lunar rover has a better coordination driving control ability when using the designed controller, which may provide a reference for motion control of other kinds of wheeled mobile robot.