Energy Comparison of Controllers Used for a Differential Drive Wheeled Mobile Robot

In order to select the best controller for a Differential Drive Wheeled Mobile Robot (DDWMR), an energy consumption comparison relating to tracking accuracy is used as a very strict criterion. Therefore, this paper reviews some well-known controllers designed for the DDWMR. Furthermore, there are presented several experiments with the extensible open-source code programmed in Python. Such an extensible open-source code presentation could serve as a tool for simulating, comparing, and evaluating a set of different control algorithms. The kinematic and dynamic models of the DDWMR and control algorithms are implemented in this open-source code to determine a travel time, a distance between the robot’s position and a given path, a linear velocity, an angular velocity, a travel path length, and a total kinetic energy loss of the DDWMR. These simulation results are used to compare and evaluate the given control algorithms. Moreover, the simulation results also enable to answer the question of whether a significant increase in energy consumption is worth shortening the travel path by just a bit. Finally, this paper includes a direct link to the stored experiments which are runnable and could serve as a proof. Besides, users can also easily supplement with other controllers and different paths to evaluate robot tracking control algorithms.