Teleoperation of Differential Drive Mobile Robots

106 p.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2008.This work presents control techniques to teleoperate Differential Drive Mobile Robots (DDMRs) over constant time delay with force feedback. Teleoperation of a single and multiple robots is considered. In the case of teleoperation of a single DDMR, two redefinitions of the passivity of the master device are presented. Using this redefinitions of passivity, a teleoperation system that coordinates position signals of the master with velocity of the slave is designed. In the case of multiple slaves, a formation of multiple DDMRs is abstracted to be controlled with two degrees of freedom by the human operator. This is done by using partial feedback linearization of the kinematic model for a DDMR. This control strategy allows to abstract and command the formation velocity or position by automatically designing linear and angular velocities for each robot that satisfy its velocity constraints while keeping a formation. Further, using this formation control scheme and a result on output synchronization over constant time delay, a bilateral teleoperation system is designed and shown to be asymptotically stable. Finally, a software tool for testing teleoperation controls is presented and two example applications are shown. This tool is also used to illustrate performance properties of the teleoperation system for multiple DDMRs described above. Experimental results of single and multiple teleoperated DDMRs are presented.U of I OnlyRestricted to the U of I community idenfinitely during batch ingest of legacy ETD