MECHANICAL

ENGINEERING

ME 652
Mobile Robotics
Handout #2:
Robot Motion

Spring, 2020
Jinwhan Kim
KAIST
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Classification of Vehicles
(Robotic) Ground Vehicles Legged
Vehicles
Wheeled

Aerial vehicles Fixed-wing

Rotary-wing

Marine vehicles Surface (floating)

Underwater

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Robot Locomotion
• Mechanisms or methods that a mobile robot use to
move from place to place, which requires physical
interaction between the robot and its environment.
• Bio-inspired robot locomotion: walking, jumping,
running, swimming, flying, etc.

[Images from Google]

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Robot Locomotion
• Human inventions: using rotary mechanisms for
locomotion (e.g., wheels and propellers)
– Energy efficient and mechanically simple
– Instead of worrying about balance, we can focus on
more important problems (e.g., navigation, planning).

[Images from Google]

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Basic Concepts of Motion

• Kinematics, Kinetics and Dynamics
– Kinematics: The mathematical description of the
motion of a point or a body without consideration of
the causes of motion (i.e. geometry of motion).
– Kinetics: A field of classical mechanics that describes
the relationship between the motion of bodies
(objects) and its causes, namely forces and torques.
– Dynamics: Kinematics + Kinetics

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How to Define Motion

• In order to quantify the motion of an object
with respect to an observer, we need a
“reference frame”.
• The Reference frame indicates who is
observing, which is defined by
– An origin
– A coordinate system

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Coordinate Systems
• Cartesian (rectangular)
– In 3D,
– In 2D,
• Cylindrical (polar)
– In 3D,
– In 2D,
• Spherical
– In 3D,

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Cartesian Coordinates
• Coordinates x, y , z
z
F • Unit vectors i, j, k
k (in directions of increasing
coordinates) are constant
i j
• Position vector
r=xi+yj+zk
r
z • Vector components
F = Fx i+Fy j+Fz k
= (F∙i) i+ (F∙j) j+ (F∙k) k

y x
y Components same regardless
of location of vector
x
ME652 by Jinwhan Kim, KAIST ME Adapted from lecture notes by Prof. Dean Mook @ Virginia Tech 8
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Cylindrical Coordinates
• Coordinates r,  , z
F
• Unit vectors er, e, ez
ez
e (in directions of increasing
coordinates)
er
• Position vector
R R = r er + z ez
z • Vector components
F = Fr er+F e +Fz ez

Components not constant,

 r
even if vector is constant

ME652 by Jinwhan Kim, KAIST ME Adapted from lecture notes by Prof. Dean Mook @ Virginia Tech 9
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Spherical Coordinates
• Coordinates r,  , 
er
e • Unit vectors er, e, e
(in directions of increasing
F
r coordinates)
e

• Position vector
r
r = r er

• Vector components
 F = Fr er+F e +F e

ME652 by Jinwhan Kim, KAIST ME Adapted from lecture notes by Prof. Dean Mook @ Virginia Tech 10
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Wheeled Robots
• Unicycle
• Steered wheels
(bicycle, tricycle)
• Differential drive
• Omnidirectional
• Tracked locomotion
• Walking wheels

[Images from Google]

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Kinematics of Wheeled Vehicles

• Unicycle model Position:

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Kinematics of Wheeled Vehicles

• Bicycle model

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Kinematics of Wheeled Vehicles

• Differential drive model

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Additional Vehicle Motion Models

• A kinematic vehicle with drift

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Additional Vehicle Motion Models

• A 3D point-mass-like vehicle with zero drift

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Degrees of Freedom

# of degrees of freedom
of a given dynamical system

# of coordinates for specifying

the configuration of the system

# of independent equations of
constraints

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Motion Constraints
• A constraint is a restriction on the freedom of
movement of a system of particles, which specifies a
relation between the system’s coordinates.
• Equations of motion for any dynamical system can be
reduced into a set of simultaneous, coupled, 2nd
order differential equations associated which come
from Newton’s 2nd law applied to each mass
component.
• Any restrictions on the possible motion of a system
can be expressed by equations called constraint
equations.

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Counting DOFs
• For holonomic systems, the number of DOFs of a
system is equal to the number of coordinates to
completely specify the system’s configuration.

# of independent constraints

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Examples

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Types of Constraints
• Holonomic vs. nonholonomic
– Holonomic: if constraints can be expressed in the following
form using generalized coordinates:

– Nonholonomic: if constraints cannot be expressed in the

form of a holonomic constraint. For example,
or
• Rheonomic vs. scleronomic
– Rheonomic: time dependent constraints
– Scleronomic: constraints are (not explicitly) time dependent

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Holonomic or Nonholonomic
• A constraint is said to be holonomic if it can be
expressed in the form

Otherwise it is nonholonomic.
• Suppose you have a constraint of the form

However it can somehow be expressed in the form

in which case we say the constraint is integrable, and

the constraint is still holonomic.
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Unicycle Example
• Equation of motion

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Degrees of Freedom
• If any motion constraints of a system are not
integrable, the system is nonholomic. Also, the
number of DOFs is further reduced by the number of
nonholonomic constraints.

# of holonomic # of nonholonomic
constraints constraints

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Nonholonomic Constraints
• Nonholonomic constraints typically arise in
the following classes of systems.
– No-slip constraint
• Mobile robots, any systems with pure rolling condition
– Conservation of angular momentum
• Free floating multibody systems
– Underactuated mechanical systems
• Most types of vehicles
• Actuators with passive joints
cf., the second-order nonholonomic systems
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Underactuated Systems
• A system whose dimension of the configuration
space exceeds that of the control input space.
• For a control affine system

where, q : a vector of linearly independent generalized coordinates

u : a vector of generalized inputs
• The system is said to be underactuated if the
external inputs are not able to command
instantaneous accelerations in all directions in the
configuration space. (e.g., )

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Underactuated Vehicles
• In fact, underactuated vehicles are very common in
real life. (e.g., wheeled mobile robots, aerial vehicles,
surface ships, underwater vehicles, etc.)
• Even fully actuated vehicles can be turned into
underactuated vehicle under certain circumstances
such as system failures and damage.
– Reliability considerations (fault-tolerant systems)
• This underactuated mechanism results in distinctive
motion characteristics, which requires special care in
motion planning.

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Nonholonomic & Underactuated

• “Many nonholonomic systems naturally fall fit into
the category of underactuated mechanisms.” (Oriolo
and Nakamura, 1991)
• “The general connection between nonholonomic
control systems and underactuated systems is not
completely understood.” (Kolmanovsky and
McClamroch, 1995)
• “Nonholonomic mechanical systems are necessarily
underactuated, the converse is not true in general.”
(Aguiar, 2002)

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Lie Bracket
• Suppose , where is a smooth vector
field
-f g

– It is important that f
-g
xo
xd

• Note that this operation can provide a new direction

of motion which is different from the directions of ,
and their linear combinations.

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Examples
• An actuator with passive joints

• A car-like robot

• Turning of an astronaut
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