Adaptive EC-GPR: a hybrid torque prediction model for mobile robots with unknown terrain disturbances

Purpose The accurate prediction of driving torque demand is essential for the development of motion controllers for mobile robots on complex terrains. This paper aims to propose a hybrid model of torque prediction, adaptive EC-GPR, for mobile robots to address the problem of estimating the required driving torque with unknown terrain disturbances. Design/methodology/approach An error compensation (EC) framework is used, and the preliminary prediction driving torque value is achieved using Gaussian process regression (GPR). The error is predicted using a continuous hidden Markov model to generate compensation for the prediction residual caused by terrain disturbances and uncertainties. As the final step, a gain coefficient is used to adaptively tune the significance of the compensation term through parameter resetting. The proposed model is verified on a sample set, including the driving torque of a mobile robot on three different sandy terrains with two driving modes. Findings The results show that the adaptive EC-GPR yields the highest prediction accuracy when compared with existing methods. Originality/value It is demonstrated that the proposed model can predict the driving torque accurately for mobile robots in an unconstructed environment without terrain identification.