Modeling and Preliminary Characterization of a Large Differential-Drive Mobile Robot

A comprehensive procedure is presented for deriving the kinematic and dynamic models of an electrically driven differential drive mobile robot (DDMR) with four wheels, configured in a 2:1 arrangement. The synthesis of this Lagrangian formulation, subject to non-holonomic constraints, includes the dynamics of the motors for each wheel. This model is characterized using the Turix VE 2.0 mobile robot from the Control Group Laboratory, aimed at executing arbitrary trajectories comparing it with an experimental data set based on sensor fusion from an IMU (Inertial Measurement Unit), encoder on the axis of each motor and the extended Kalman filter.The results show consistent data validating the effectiveness of the proposed modeling approach, using parameters from a real robot. Valuable insights are obtained that guide the next phase of closed-loop control, highlighting the importance of the third-order model, which integrates motor dynamics into the motion control architecture. These findings provide a foundation for the design and development of a robotic autonomous vehicle of these dimensions.