Mecanum Wheel Mobile Robot System

The highlight in this book stem from a complexity of mecanum wheel design and the motion control difficulty due to the fact that there are four wheels to control three different degrees of freedom (DOF). The mecanum wheel mobile robot consists of both hardware and software development for omnidirectional motion characteristics and autonomous navigation. The scope in this book can be separated into two major parts. Part 1 is the development of mobile robot system hardware including mecanum wheel, robot chassis, motor controller and the robot controller. Part 2 concerns about the mobile robot characteristics, motion study, modelling and development of autonomous navigation using obstacle avoidance and line follower applications. A design environment was developed to rapidly generate, evaluate and refine designs for both the physical hardware embodied by robot as well as the software algorithms used for the mobile robot control. The mecanum wheels give advantages in the maneuverability and provide the extra motion for the sideways and diagonal movement. These motion paths help the mobile robot to work in limited working area and congested environment.