A Coordinated Control Method of Multi-wheeled Robot for Planet Exploration

For the planet surface exploration,a multi-wheel-driven structure based on a crank slider is investigated,and the multi-wheel coordinated control problem of the robot is studied.The variations of the driving torques of the robot moving both on the planar and rough terrains are analyzed in detail.A multi-drivers coordinated control method based on the variations of driving torques is proposed and realized on the platform of the multi-wheeled mobile robot.The field tests indicate that the method decreases the longitudinal slide caused by uncoordinated movements of the wheels,and increases the accuracy of the encoder localization,and so the energy consumption is reduced effectively.