SRC2 - Explicit Steering - Crab, Straight, and Pivot Movements

SRC2 Rover

This is the third in a series of post about my involvement with the qualifying round of the NASA Space Robotics Challenge - Phase 2 (SRC2). The first post introduced the basics of the competition. One aspect of the challenge is there is no controller for the rover depicted to the right. It uses Explicit Four Wheel Steering which allows the orientation of the wheels to be independently changed. This provides multiple ways for the rover to move, e.g. straight, crab, turn, pivot.

The second post explored the geometry on positioning the wheels for a turn. This post will address pivoting in place and crab movement, i.e. moving sideways. It also addresses the trivial crab case of moving straight forward or back. 

SRC2 - Explicit Steering - Wheel Orientation for Turning

SRC2 Rover

The first post in this series explained I'm currently involved with the qualifying round of the NASA Space Robotics Challenge - Phase 2 (SRC2). The competition requires controlling the rover to the right. It uses Explicit Four Wheel Steering which allows the orientation of the wheels to be independently changed, This provides multiple ways for the rover to move, e.g. straight, crab, turn, pivot.

The challenge is there is no controller for the rover in the Robot Operating System (ROS) because the rover wheels are controlled by effort, not the typical speed control.

This article address the geometry of controlling the rover when it is turning. The diagram below illustrates the rover making a counter-clockwise turn around the Instantaneous Center of Rotation (ICR). The arrows represent the wheel orientation. The dotted box is drawn proportional to the wheel base and track of the rover. Note the orientation of the X/Y axis which is ROS standard for robots.

Explicit Steering - Rover Turning

Term	Description
ICR	Instantaneous Center of Rotation
Rr	Radius from ICR to center of rover
Ri, Ro	Radius of  rover's inner (i) and outer (o) sides through ICR
Wb, Wt	Wheel base and wheel track of rover. Lengths are representative of actual size.
WRi, WRo	Radius of inner(i) and outer (o) wheels
δi, δo	Steering angle for inner (i) and outer (o) wheels