Addressing Collision Avoidance and Nonholonomic Constraints of a Wheeled Robot: Modeling and Simulation

This paper presents kinematic model of two configurations of a wheeled mobile robot. Two-wheeled robot with castor and four-wheeled robot are considered for modeling. Kinematic equations, modeled in MATLAB/Simulink, represent the position and angle of the mobile robots. Simulation results illustrate the actual trajectory followed by the 'soft' robot. The potential use of the derived kinematic model is two folds; in research as well as in academia. The model can be employed to test and validate advanced algorithms related with mobile robots e.g. for collision avoidance, path-planning, navigation etc while in an educational environment, it can assist students to study the behavior and nonholonomic constraints of their robots prior to their fabrication for competitions. As a case study to demonstrate the application of the developed model, the present research proposed a novel collision avoidance algorithm named as Intelligent Bug Algorithm (IBA). Preliminary comparative results dictate that IBA outperforms the reported Bug algorithms.