Redesign of a Towing Mobile Robot Control Architecture and Implementation of Outdoor Experiments Using the Transverse Function Approach

This article discusses the redesign of a towing mobile robot to obtain a modern system for implementing mobile robot control research. Controller architecture issues are presented, and a selected control algorithm is considered in detail. The reconstruction of the robot is also intended to ensure that the current standards for the electronic architecture controlling the robot are met and that this architecture can be easily developed to include components related to the safety of the robot’s operation. The discussion of the control architecture is divided into a description of the high-level controller responsible for the position stabilization algorithm and a description of the low-level controller responsible for the drive motor control and robot safety. The high-level control algorithm is responsible for a trajectory tracking task realized with use of a transverse function approach algorithm. A time elastic band algorithm was also used to generate a reference trajectory, allowing the robot to be guided through waypoints. The low-level controller is comprehensively described with details on the industrial controller architecture used, the communication between the controller modules, and the interaction of these modules with the on-board computer. The redesign of the towing mobile robot was summarized by the implementation of outdoor experiments where the task of driving through reference points was completed.