Design of a triple singularity drive for mobile wheeled robots

Abstract

This thesis encompasses the development of a mobile robotic platform using three singularity drive modules. The process begins with a review of other omnidirectional platforms, comparing and contrasting their strengths and weaknesses. It continues with a discussion of the mechanical and electrical design of a robot prototype, then into kinematic modeling of the system. Both the inverse and forward kinematics are derived and validated through a path following experiment using an open loop controller. For this experiment, the robot was given a 1 meter square path as the desired trajectory, and coded to follow this path at 1 m/s speed. With the open loop controller, the robot was able to track this desired trajectory with a maximum of 16% error in position. An analysis of the results was performed, including discussion on possible sources of error in the system, and areas for future work are explored.