Singularity-Free Dynamic Modeling Including Wheel Dynamics for an Omni-Directional Mobile Robot with Three Caster Wheels

Most of the previously employed dynamic modeling approaches, including Natural Orthogonal Complement Algorithm, have limitations on their application to the mobile robot, specifically at singular configurations. Also, in their dynamic modeling of mobile robots, wheel dynamics is usually ignored assuming that its dynamic effect is negligibly small. As a remedy for this, a singularity-free operational space dynamic modeling approach based on Lagrange’s form of the D’Alembert principle is proposed, and the singularity-free characteristic of the proposed dynamic modeling is discussed in the process of analytical derivation of the proposed dynamic model. Then an accurate dynamic model taking into account the wheel dynamics of the omnidirectional mobile robot is derived, and through simulation it is manifested that the effect of the wheel dynamics on the whole dynamic model of the mobile robot may not be negligible, but rather in some cases it is significantly large, possibly affecting the operational performances of dynamic model-based control algorithms. Lastly, the importance of its accurate dynamic model is further illustrated through impulse analysis and its simulation for the mobile robot.