• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.18 no.5
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• pp.65-73
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• 2001

In this paper, a mobile system using multi-wheel steering and driving mechanism is proposed to maximize maneuverability of the wheeled mobile system. Among various possible configurations, the two-wheel steering and driving systems, which is minimal in structural requirement, is proposed to reduce the complexity in actual design and difficulties in control. The system possesses three or four degrees of freedom depending on the orientations of two wheels, one or two for driving and two for steering, which implies that the system's mobility is always less than three DOF. The proposed system, nonetheless, can exactly emulate characteristics of the omnidirectional motion as long as the planned path is smooth i.e., the curvature changes continuously while velocity is not zero. Efficient kinematic and dynamic control algorithms are proposed for position and orientation control of the proposed wheeled mobile system.