Study of an Omni-directional Mobile Robot with Kinematic Redundancy

기구학적 여유 자유도를 지니는 전방향 모바일 로봇에 관한 연구

Most omni-directional mobile robots have to change their trajectory for avoiding obstacles regardless of the size of the obstacles. However, an omni-directional mobile robot having kinematic redundancy can maintain the trajectory while the robot avoids small obstacles. This works deals with the kinematic modeling and motion planning of an omni-directional mobile robot with kinematic redundancy. This robot consists of three wheel mechanisms. Each wheel mechanism is modeled as having four joints, while only three joints are necessary for creating the omni-directional motion. Thus, each chain has one kinematic redundancy. Two types of wheel mechanisms are compared and its kinematic modeling is introduced. Finally, several motion planning algorithms using the kinematic redundancy are investigated. The usefulness of this robot is shown through experiment.