Comparative study of tracking control for a mobile manipulator: Nonholonomic and dynamic cases

This paper gives an in-depth treatment of the modeling and control of a mobile manipulator which consists of a robotic manipulator mounted upon a mobile robot. By neglecting slip of the platform's tires, nonholonomic constraints are introduced into the equations of motion. By considering wheel slip, the assumption of nonholonomic motion is violated. Nonholonomic and dynamic models of a mobile manipulator are developed and compared using the Lagrange -d'Alembert formulation and the Newton-Euler method, respectively. The dynamic model which considers wheel slip incorporates a nonlinear tire friction model. The tracking problem is investigated by using input-output linearization for the nonholonomic model. For the dynamic model, a robust control method based on a matching condition is developed to eliminate the harmful effects of wheel slip, which acts as a disturbance to the system. Then, the effect of wheel slip on the tracking of commanded motion is identified via simulation. The effectiveness of the proposed control algorithm is demonstrated through computer simulation.