Fault tolerant control strategy for OmniKity-III

In this paper a novel wheeled omnidirectional mobile robot, the OmniKity-III (OK-III), is developed and its kinematic model and control laws are derived. A special gear train with omnidirectional mechanism was developed using conventional tire wheels. Several control laws are provided by considering the robot as a redundantly actuated wheeled mobile robot on the plane. Since the robot has three degrees of freedom in motion, failure in any one of the motor can be compensated by the other two motors in posture control although the omnidirectional mobility is lost. Simulations and experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed omnidirectional mechanism.