Experimental Validation of an Underactuated Two-Wheeled Mobile Robot

Reported in this paper are the implementation and testing of the real-time control of a two-wheeled mobile robot. The robot is underactuated, its mobility and control inputs being three and two, respectively. The control challenge faced here is to reduce the oscillations of the intermediate body while following a desired path. A controller, introduced elsewhere, is implemented using a real-time operating system on a novel control architecture. The control algorithm was tested using three different test motions: translational, rotational, and uphill.