Modeling and motion stability analysis of skid-steered mobile robots

Abstract—Skid-steered mobile robots are widely used be-cause of the simplicity of mechanism and high reliability. However, understanding of the kinematics and dynamics of such a robotic platform is challenging due to the complex wheel/ground interactions and kinematic constraints. In this paper, we attempt to develop a kinematic and dynamic modeling scheme to analyze the skid-steered mobile robot. We model wheel/ground interaction and analyze the robot motion sta-bility. As an application example, we present how to utilize the kinematic and dynamic modeling and analysis for robot localization and slip estimation using only low-cost strapdown inertial measurement units (IMU). The extended Kalman filter (EKF)-based localization scheme incorporates the kinematic constraints. The performance of the EKF-based localization and slip estimation scheme are presented. The estimation methodology is tested and validated on a robotic testbed. I