Control design for a mobile robot including tire behavior

In order to support the development process of Advanced Driver Assistance systems for road vehicles, TNO is operating a hardware-in-the-loop test setup. In this facility, called VeHIL, vehicles in the direct neighborhood of the test vehicle are simulated using wheeled mobile robots. Due to the required type of maneuvers, these robots have independently driven and steered wheels. Consequently, the robot is over-actuated. Furthermore, since the robot is capable of high dynamic maneuvers, slip effects caused by the tires can play an important role. A position controller based on feedback linearization is presented, using the so-called multicycle approach which regards the robot as a set of independent unicycles. As a result, the wheeled mobile robot is position controlled while each unicycle is controlled taking weight transfer as well as longitudinal and lateral tire slip into account.