Experimental control approach of a mecanum-wheeled mobile robot for slippage error and energy consumption reduction on different surfaces

The mecanum wheel is an unconventional wheel composed of a hub and passive rollers attached to the wheel disk. Due to this feature, mobile robots equipped with mecanum wheels can move in any direction: forward, backward, left, and right sideways, diagonally at any angle, and rotate around their axis. For this reason, they are used when high levels of maneuverability are required. However, there is a problem referred to as wheel slippage, which is associated with the roller making contact with the surface, causing significant deviations in the vehicle’s orientation during its trajectory, which is undesirable. In this work, we present the experimental results of a low-level control law by introducing a ramp-like feature in the reference signal to mitigate abrupt wheel responses and reduce slippage. We compare the effectiveness of the proposed approach with traditional techniques on different surfaces.