A Holistic Approach to Wheeled Robot Design: Mechanical Structure and Control Strategies

A holistic approach to the design of various aspects of an agricultural differential drive robot for use in greenhouses is presented. The mechanical structure used along with design considerations for the motors used are elaborated. Three different controllers for path-following tasks in differential drive robots: Pure Pursuit along with Proportional Integral Derivative (PID) control, Stanley along with PID control, and Model Predictive Control (MPC) are used to determine control commands, including linear and angular velocities. The suitability of the controllers in terms errors in path following are studied.