Design of an Omni-directional Mobile Robot with 3-Caster Wheels

Abstract

In this paper, design of a 3-degree-of-freedom mobile robot with three caster wheels is performed. Initially, kinematic modeling and singularity analysis of the mobile robot is performed. It is found that the singularity can be avoided when the robot has more than two wheels on which two active joints are located. Optimal kinematic parameters of mobile robots with three active joint variables and with four active joint variables are obtained and compared with respect to kinematic isotropic index of the Jacobian matrix of the mobile robot which is functions of the wheel radius and the length of steering link.