Positional error estimation for hydraulic actuated mobile robot controlled by digital flow control units

Abstract

Autonomous mobile robots are extensively used for a considerable number of industrial and household operations. Currently, these mobile robots are deployed for low to moderate payload carrying exercises. However, it is inevitable in the near future to use autonomous mobile robots for higher payload applications on the off-road conditions. This will extend the handling applications of autonomous mobile robots in the fields of agriculture, forestry, construction, mining, military and many more. On the other side, these kinds of applications will demand higher torque to inertia ratio on the wheels to overcome the challenges in the terrains. The existing electric motor ransmission system in the mobile robot will consumes more power to generate higher torque to inertia ratio. As well the higher torque electric motors are costlier and not suitable for rough environment. Therefore, the electric motor transmission system will not be suitable solution for off-road applications specifically on heavy payload conditions. In recent days, the off-road heavy duty vehicles are incorporate with hydraulic power transmission system to overcome the off-road challenges. This is because, the hydraulic power transmission system has ability to produce higher torque to inertia ratio. In addition, it is also economical compare with electric motor transmission system in account of torque demand. However, most of the hydraulic power transmission vehicles are manually or tele operated. In order to establish the autonomy behaviour in the system it is essential to attain controllability on the hydraulic transmission system. In this ork, an attempt is made to develop a hydraulic driven mobile robot model controlled by a digital hydraulic control circuits. In order to obtain the objective, the work was divided into three phases newline