Disturbance Cancellation of a Nonholonomic Wheeled Mobile Robot using Active Force Control: Spring Disturbance Case Study

Abstract

The experimental rig of the WMR was successfully designed and developed
employing full mechatronics approach. The practical experimentation was also fruitfully carried out to demonstrate the robustness of the proposed vω-AFC scheme. The experimental study was implemented to complement the findings of the previous theoretical (simulation) study. Indeed, the experimental results clearly indicate that the proposed vω-AFC method performs more robustly compared to its counterpart (vω method) in the presence of a number of disturbances and different operating conditions.
The results for the no disturbance condition are comparable for both schemes although the vω controller shows a marginally better performance than the other. It is also demonstrated that the performance of the vω controller deteriorates significantly with the introduction of disturbances. With the assistance of AFC, vω-AFC scheme is also found to be fast in computing the disturbance compensation torque through the given IN and
measured parameters (acceleration θ'' and actuating torque).