A research study on synchronous drive for robots

The synchronous drive system, with its design and kinematics, is a promising drive system. The drive system is appropriate in surveillance or industry-related applications. Despite this, a formal procedure that can aid robot designers in checking, testing and correcting the robot for odometric errors does not exist. The benchmark method for synchronous drive systems is a testing procedure designed to uncover the odometry errors a particular drive system might encounter. The study focused in determining the systematic errors since the non-systematic errors are impossible to represent accurately. The test procedure to be developed for the synchronous drive focuses on four aspects on the development of the benchmark method. First, the research studies the University of Michigan Benchmark method which is the basis for the resting procedure. Second is the study of the kinematics of the synchronous drive system, which uncovers the possible errors as early as possible. Third, it considers the development of methods and testing procedures that are able to measure and quantify the data through testing and data gathering. A research on the effective benchmark path is developed for isolating sources of systematic errors in a synchronous drive system. The benchmark path is formulated based on studying three different types of paths namely, the straight line path, right turn path and the curvilinear path. Lastly, it characterizes the performance of the synchronous drive system via analysis of the results of the testing procedure. Through characterization, the percentage of errors and performance can be expressed quantitatively and qualitatively which is going to be the basis of the mobile robot calibration. A three-wheeled synchronous driven robot is used to test the benchmark method. Calibrations and modifications are going to be applied on the robot to test the consistency of the benchmark method in detecting the errors and improving the system\u27s performance. After the necessary adjustments, it was determined that around 78% of the system\u27s error was reduced