Stable Traveling Control Considering Slip of Wheels in Two-wheel Mobile Robot

Recently, two-wheel mobile robot such as Segway is expected to be applied to a personal mobility. And it has the advantage of easy turning and stepping over and the disadvantage that many sensors are required for stabilization. In conventional researches, the stability and operability of the two-wheeled mobile robot were improved. These are established by assuming that “the wheels do not slip”. However, a slip of the wheels cannot be ignored in actual driving, so that it is difficult to stably travel on a slippery road. In this paper, we consider the body-velocity by assuming “the wheels slip in the modeling”. Sliding mode control system by using the body-velocity was proposed. Then, the acceleration observer is introduced to compensate the acceleration on body velocity. We consider both the body-velocity tracking and the pitch angle stabilization and achieve stable traveling control on slippery road. The validity of the proposed method is confirmed by simulation results and experimental results.