Glocal Control for Mecanum-Wheeled Vehicle with Slip Compensation

This paper designs a hierarchical decentralized controller for a mecanum-wheeled vehicle that is considered as a heterogeneous multi-agent system, according to the concept of glocal control. The equations of motion of each individual mecanum wheel and the entire vehicle with slip is analyzed to produce an interconnected, nonlinear model that can be linearized to apply linear control theory. The global objective is the motion of the vehicle, in terms of both position and orientation, produced by the effective forces of each wheel. The local objective is the driving force and slip control of each wheel, considering the interconnection between all agents. The proposed hierarchical LQR (linear quadratic regulator) controller ensures the satisfaction of both global and local objectives. Simulation results of a mecanum wheel are shown that verifies the performance of the method.