High-Fidelity Yet Fast Dynamic Models of Wheeled Mobile Robots

Advances in hardware design have made wheeled mobile robots (WMRs) exceptionally mobile. To fully exploit this mobility, we present a novel dynamic model formulation for use in WMR planning, control, and estimation systems. The formulation is high fidelity, general, modular, and fast. It builds on our prior work on recursive methods for 3-D kinematics derivation and constrained motion prediction using differential algebraic equations. It is stable, even for large integration steps, and can enforce realistic nonlinear models of wheel-terrain interaction. Simulation tests show our dynamic models to be more functional, stable, and efficient than common alternatives. Simulations can run over 1K × faster than real time on an ordinary PC. Experimental results on multiple platforms and terrain types show that, once calibrated, our models predict motion accurately. To facilitate their use, we have released open-source MATLAB and C++ libraries implementing our modeling/simulation methods.