Estimation of the Maximum Friction Coefficient of the Rough Terrain to Control the Mobile Robots

When mobile robots perform the mission in the rough terrain, the traversability depended on the terrain characteristic is useful information. In the traversabilities, wheel-terrain maximum friction coefficient can indicate the index to control wheel-terrain traction force or whether mobile robots to go or not. This paper proposes estimating wheel-terrain maximum friction coefficient. The existing method to estimate the maximum friction coefficient is limited in flat terrain or relatively easy driving knowing wheel absolute velocity. But this algorithm is applicable in rough terrain where a lot of slip occurred not knowing wheel absolute velocity. This algorithm applies the tire-friction model to each wheel to express the behavior of wheel friction and classifies slip-friction characteristic into 3 major cases. In each case, the specific algorithm to estimate the maximum friction coefficient is applied. To test the proposed algorithm`s feasibility, test bed(ROBHAZ-6WHEEL) simulations are performed. And then the experiment to estimate the maximum friction coefficient of the test bed is performed. To compare the estimated value with the real, we measure the real maximum friction coefficient. As a result of the experiment, the proposed algorithm has high accuracy in estimating the maximum friction coefficient.