Intelligent control of a multi-actuator mobile robot with competing factors

In this paper an effective conventional/intelligent approach has been described which solves the problem of actuator competing factors for the class of indirect all-wheel drive skid-steer mobile robots. The above arrangement allows all the wheels to be independently driven in order to meet the different variations in the tyre-ground interface. However this wheel independence in practice can result in the independent wheel controllers to compete in order to achieve their individual design objective. It has been observed from real mobile robots that this phenomenon results in higher than usual current requests due to the force mismatch between the different wheel actuators which strain the energy system faster than usual and consequently result in a higher risk of being unsuccessful when operating autonomously in demanding environments such as a planetary rover, a construction or a mining robot.