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An efficient steering control formulation for the articulated body mobile robot “KR-II”

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Abstract

This paper introduces an efficient steering control method for the articulated body mobile robot “Koryu-II (KR-II)”. KR-II is a real robot, composed of six cylindrical segments linked in series and has a long snake-like appearance. The main issue on KR-II's steering control is, given from a remote human operator the velocity and orientation commands for the foremost segment, to automatically generate joint commands for all the following segments, such that they follow the foremost segment's trajectory. The derived method is based on a trajectory planning scheme in the inertial reference frame, and is feasible for real time computation. It also presents good energy efficiency and trajectory tracking performance characteristics, and can be extended for KR-II's “W-Shaped Configuration” steering control, which augments the lateral stability of the robot, essential for locomotion over uneven terrain. The validity of these methods are verified by experiments on the mechanical model KR-II.

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Fukushima, E.F., Hirose, S. An efficient steering control formulation for the articulated body mobile robot “KR-II”. Auton Robot 3, 7–18 (1996). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00162464

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