Design of Hardware-in-the-loop Simulation Approach for Slip-Compensated Odometry Tracked Mobile Robot Platform

Skid-steer locomotion is often used on tracked vehicles such as tanks and bulldozers. The tracks on each side of the vehicle can be driven at various speeds and direction, which enables the vehicle to change its orientation. Skid-steering tracked mobile robot platforms are especially prone to slippage when turning. Hence, a slip-compensated odometry model is usually applied to the kinematics of a skid-steering vehicle in predicting vehicle motion. The model is expected to be functional in both laboratories’ settings and real life environment. To minimize the gap between the simulation and real implementation, a Hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) technique is proposed in the paper. The approach allows the interface between virtual simulation data and real skid-steering robot. The Hardware-in-the-loop simulation uses Unreal Engine (UE) to create a virtual tracked mobile robot platform and environment model. Experiment results confirmed that the developed skid steering kinematics model can control both real and simulated robot.