Experimental study of a fast mobile robot performing a drift maneuver

In this paper we present a mobile robotic platform designed for experimental analysis of the robot control during sliding at high velocity. We use the developed platform for experimental analysis of the mobile robot performing aggressive 90 degrees steering maneuver at high speed (about 8 m/s) on the highly slippery surface (Coulomb friction coefficient about 0.4). The maneuver is performed in feedforward manner by the controller, which was previously developed using methods of stochastic multiobjective optimization applied to the simplified mathematical model of the robot. The theoretical trajectory of the maneuver assumes significant oversteering associated with large slippage angle (more then 30 degrees), which is kinematically incompatible with noslipping condition and thus is significantly dependent on actual properties of the wheel-terrain interaction. The experimentally observed trajectory of the robot was qualitatively similar to the one obtained in the model, though the actual angle of turn was less then the desired (about 75 degrees instead of 90 degrees).