Kinematic motion studies of an OmniDirectional mobile robot

Actuator failure may severely affect the performance of mobile robots and vehicles. This study serves to evaluate how a mobile system responds under various actuator failure modes to determine appropriate methods to satisfy performance objectives. We evaluate a kinematically symmetric holonomic mobile robot while fully actuable (with no motor/wheel failures), as well as under actuator failure conditions. Closed-loop state feedback is applied to the system to observe performance and self-correction under both nominal and failure mode conditions, and resulting performance is evaluated. Observations of these conditions motivate the need to address failure modes within the controller architecture.