Predictive kinematic control of an omnidirectional mobile robot

This paper presents a predictive kinematic control method for a three-wheeled omnidirectional mobile robot on the basis of MY wheel-II assemblies. Firstly, the kinematic analysis is conducted, which shows that eight possible models can be employed in the controller to produce the desired motor velocity for servo motors. Then for each finite fixed prediction horizon, a predictive control strategy is proposed to select the optimal model from the eight possible models. The key idea is that, for each finite fixed prediction horizon, the future value of a cost function is estimated for all the eight possible models. The model which minimizes the cost function is selected. Several simulations have been conducted to verify the effectiveness of the proposed control method. It shows that the proposed control method achieves definitely better performance than a previous proposed control method using an average model to produce the desired motor velocity.