3.1. Development of a Kinematic Model of a Four-Wheeled Mobile Robot for Agricultural Applications
Case study and assumptions
Assumptions in dynamic model development are principles, simplifications and approximations that make the model tractable and computationally feasible, while capturing real-world system characteristics. Common assumptions depend on the model’s nature and modelling objectives [
8]. The importance of assumptions in wheeled mobile robot model design lies in their ability to simplify the problem, capture the essential characteristics, enable analysis and simulation, facilitate design decisions, assess the model’s limitations, and enable comparisons and benchmarking. Careful consideration of these assumptions is crucial for developing accurate and reliable models that can guide the design and development of effective wheeled mobile robots. The assumptions in this study were:
linearity: assuming that the system behaves in a linear manner, where the output is directly proportional to the input, this simplifies the mathematical analysis and allows for the use of linear techniques
time-invariance: assuming that the system’s behaviour does not change over time, this means that the system’s properties and characteristics remain constant throughout the modelling period
homogeneity: assuming that the system’s behaviour is uniform throughout its spatial domain, this means that the system’s properties and characteristics are the same at all points in space
determinism: assuming that the system’s behaviour is fully determined by its initial conditions and inputs, this excludes the influence of random or stochastic factors
perfect knowledge: assuming that all relevant information about the system is known and available for modelling purposes, this includes complete knowledge of the system’s structure, parameters and boundary conditions.
Agriculture, a major economic sector, contributes 6.4 % of global productivity and employs a significant workforce. In view of concerns about food security, population growth and climate change, innovative approaches such as wheeled mobile robots are being explored.
Figure 1 shows a wheeled mobile robot in use in agricultural areas. This wheeled mobile is dynamic since it observes the entire plant’s health status as it moves along.
Following the literature review, kinematical models of a wheeled mobile robot were developed (
Figure 2). Based on the kinematical models of a wheeled mobile robot, state space was generated. The kinematical models of wheeled mobile robots then required regulation, and the optimal controllers were selected for this. If the gain obtained was optimal, it was directly provided to the dynamical models of the wheeled mobile robot. Subsequently, data were collected from the dynamic models of the wheeled mobile robot for analysis purposes. If the gain was not optimal, the controller design was examined again, with the tuned and relaunched system checked until the desired optimal gain was obtained.
Considering only the kinematic equation model of the SSMR (
Figure 3), the following velocity constraint was obtained:
Where is inertia centre, is vertical velocity of the robot, and is angular velocity of the mobile robot.
Equation (1) is not integrable and is consequently a nonholonomic constraint. It can therefore be rewritten in the form
where equation (1) is used. Since the generalised velocity is always in the null space of A, the last equation is not integrable. Consequently, it describes a nonholonomic constraint that can be rewritten in the Pfaffian form:
Where is state space variable matrix.
Rearranging the kinematics models, the state space equation below was finally achieved:
The input matrix is the following equation:
Where is velocity vectors of both linear and angular velocity.
Then the dynamic properties of the SSMR were described, since the dynamic effects play an important role in such vehicles. This is caused by unknown lateral skidding ground interaction forces. First, the wheel forces depicted in
Figure 3 were examined.
Figure 3.
Forces acting on one wheel [
8].
Figure 3.
Forces acting on one wheel [
8].
The active force Fi and reactive force
are related to the wheel torque and gravity, respectively. It is clear that
is linearly dependent on the wheel control input
, namely:
It was assumed that the vertical force
acts from the surface to the wheel. Considering the four wheels of the vehicle (
Figure 4) and neglecting additional dynamic properties, the following equations of equilibrium were obtained:
where m denotes the vehicle mass and g is the gravity acceleration. Where
are the position of robot wheels,
,
,
, are forces on the wheels, M moment of the wheels,
torques of the wheels
velocities of the wheel, V velocity of the mobile robot. Since there is symmetry along the longitudinal midline, the following was obtained:
It was assumed that the vector
results from the rolling resistant moment
and the vector
denotes the lateral reactive force. These reactive forces can be regarded as friction forces. However, it is important to note that friction modelling is quite complicated since it is highly nonlinear and depends on many variables. Therefore, in most cases only a simplified approximation describing the friction
as a superposition of Coulomb and viscous friction is considered. It can be written as:
where σ denotes the linear velocity, N is the force perpendicular to the surface, and
and
denote the coefficients of Coulumb and viscous friction, respectively. Since for the SSMR the velocity σ is relatively low, especially during lateral slippage, the relation
is valid, which allowed the term
to be neglected to simplify the model. It is very important to note that the function of a kinematics system is not smooth when the velocity σ equals zero, because of the sign function sgn (σ). It is obvious that this function is not differentiable at
. Since the aim was to obtain a continuous and time-differentiable model of the SSMR, the following approximation of this function was proposed:
where
is a constant that determines the approximation accuracy according to the relation
Based on the previous deliberations, the friction forces for one wheel can be written as:
where
and
denote the coefficients of the lateral and longitudinal forces, respectively. Using the Lagrange-Euler formula with Lagrange multipliers to include the nonholonomic constraint (1), the dynamic equation of the robot can be obtained. Next, it was assumed that the potential energy of the robot
because of the planar motion. Therefore, the Lagrangian L of the system equals the kinetic energy:
Considering the kinetic energy of the vehicle and neglecting the energy of rotating wheels, the following equation was developed:
where m denotes the mass of the robot and I is the moment of inertia of the robot about the COM. For simplicity, it was assumed that the mass distribution is homogeneous. Since
substituting equation (16) into eqn. (15) can be rewritten in the following form:
After calculating the partial derivative of kinetic energy and its time derivative, the inertial forces could be obtained as
where
Consequently, the forces that cause the dissipation of energy were considered. In accordance with
Figure 2, the following resultant forces expressed in the inertial frame could be calculated:
The resistant moment around the centre of mass
can be obtained as
To define generalised resistive forces, the vector
was introduced. The active forces generated by the actuators which make the robot move can be expressed in the inertial frame as follows:
The active torque around the common point was calculated as:
Consequently, the vector F of active forces had the following form:
Using (4), (26) and (27) and assuming that the radius of each wheel is the same, this gave
To simplify the notation, a new torque control input τ was defined as
where
and
denote the torques produced by the wheels on the left and right sides of the vehicle, respectively. Combining (26) and (27), this gives
where B is the input transformation matrix defined as:
Next, using (1), (23) and (30), the following dynamic model was obtained:
It should be noted that (30) describes the dynamics of a free body only and does not include the nonholonomic constraint (2). Therefore, a constraint had to be imposed on (30). To this end, a vector of Lagrange multipliers, λ, was introduced as follows:
For control purposes it would be more suitable to express (29) in terms of the internal velocity vector η. Therefore, (33) was multiplied from the left by
, which resulted in:
After taking the time derivative of (3), this gave:
Next, using (33) and (3) in (31), the dynamic equations became
where
3.2. Hybridisation Controller Design for a Wheeled Mobile Robot
The principles and techniques of control theory are essential for the design, analysis, and optimization of feedback control systems to achieve the desired system behavior and performance. The control system could be standalone or hybridized based on the model complex. Individual control algorithms refer to standalone, single-technique control approaches, such as PID (proportional-integral-derivative) control, fuzzy logic control, adaptive control, optimal control, and robust control. They can be effective in handling specific types of control problems but may have limitations in handling more complex or uncertain systems. Individual control algorithms are generally simpler to design, implement, and tune compared to hybridized approaches. While hybridization can provide enhanced capabilities but at the cost of increased complexity, individual control algorithms offer a simpler and more targeted approach but may have limitations in handling certain control challenges. The choice between hybridization and individual control algorithms depends on the specific control problem, the desired performance characteristics, the complexity of the system, and the available resources for implementation and tuning. Hybridization can provide improved flexibility, robustness, and adaptability compared to individual control algorithms. The design of a hybrid control system requires more complexity to integrate the different components effectively. Hybridization is the combination of multiple control algorithms or techniques to achieve better performance or handle more complex systems. Hybridizing LQG with fuzzy control algorithms contributes to improved efficiency, increased driving range, enhanced regenerative braking, improved responsiveness and performance, flexibility in power management, increased reliability, and redundancy for wheeled mobiles for agricultural purposes. The goal of hybridizing LQG with fuzzy is to leverage the strengths of different control approaches and compensate for their individual weaknesses.
In the controller design, the first step is to design the linear quadratic regulator controller (
Figure 5). If penalised gains from the LQR scenario are obtained, the penalised rate gain is identified. If not, go back to the LQR controller and adjust the penalised rate gain. If it is cheap, then the optimal gain values are passed to the fuzzy logic LQR controller framework. If not, then check whether an expensive penalised rate exists or not. If it is an expensive penalised rate, then the optimal gain values are passed to the fuzzy logic LQR controller framework. If not, it goes back to the LQR controller framework retuned. If the fuzzy logic LQR framework achieves the optimal penalisation rate, then it is optimised further and passed to the LQG framework. Based on the optimal gain, the LQG estimates the output parameters and adjusts the optimal gain in advance. After that, the greatest optimal controller gains are passed to the FLQG framework for its robust performance. Then, with wheeled mobile robot dynamics, the system is optimally regulated and robust.
The state feedback control (SFC) technique is based on the placement of the system poles. A gain matrix (K) and the state variables are used for the pole placement of the system. In SFC the poles of the closed-loop system may be placed in any chosen position. Nevertheless, for the methods of output feedback control, the poles of systems may be given to a definite point. In this technique, the state variables are implemented by a state feedback controller. The state variables of the system are feedback. All feedbacks multiplied by a state feedback gain matrix are compared with the reference input. The important point in the SFC design is to calculate K. The LQR controller is one of the most widely used methods for this. In the LQR controller, the optimal feedback parameters of the K matrix are taken by the cost function (J), which optimises the states, x(t) and the control signal u(t) of the system [
8]:
J depends on the matrix Q and R. Q and R are defined as a positive semi-defined matrix. Furthermore, the K gain matrix is determined based on Q and R. The control signal is shown below:
where P is obtained by the differential equation of Riccati:
The K matrix is determined with P. It is the solution of the Riccati equation:
n is the number of state variables. The LQR controller performance is dependent on the choice of weight matrices. In the literature, there are many different approaches for the choice of Q and R, for example Bryson’s Rule. A simple choice approach can be
and
. Furthermore, several optimisation algorithms can be used to obtain the optimal values of Q and R.
-
A.
Fuzzy linear quadratic regulator (FLQR)
This controller is a combination of the optimal control approach (LQR) and the fuzzy control method. The fusion controller structure is used to design a linear fusion function (LFF). The LFF transforms the multiple variables into comprehensive error (E) and error change (EC), which simplifies the FLC controller. The FLC structure based on the LQR controller is illustrated in
Figure 6.
For the WMRS, the LFF is given as follows [
33]:
The Mamdani-type fuzzy model was developed with the aim of adjusting the closed-loop controller feedback gains. The input variables (KR and KE) and the output variable (Control signal-U) are converted into linguistic variables as follows: NB – negative big, NM – negative medium, NM – negative small, Z – zero, PS – positive small, PM – positive medium and PB – positive big. Triangular membership functions are used for the graphical inference of the input and output variables.
Table 1 presents the fuzzy rules applied to the controller of the wheeled mobile robot [
32].
-
B.
Linear quadratic Gaussian (LQG)
In a linear dynamic system,
estimates the system states from the information of input and output.
Figure 7 shows the block diagram of the Kalman filter (
). Noised signals (Wd, Wn) are combined with the linear dynamic system to improve the system construction needed by the
algorithm.
According to the added noised signal, the state-space model of wheeled mobile robot can be the system given as follows [
31]:
The dynamic equation of KF is added to the state space and is given by the equation [
34]:
The
gain
is calculated as the follows:
P and R are algebraic constants calculated with the Riccati equation and the output covariance matrix, respectively. and are the estimated state variables and outputs, respectively.
Using Eqs. (32) and (34), (35) is obtained.
An optimal
gain matrix must be determined for the
design. The structure of LQG is taken by adding
to the LQR, as can be seen in Figure 9(b). The
is obligatory if the state variables of the LQR needed to be estimated. LQG is an optimal controller method for some systems that have uncertainty. The
is used to estimate the state variables according to the system input and the measured output variables. The state variables will be multiplied by the K matrix to generate the control signal (u):
If the control signal is applied to the state-space model and the noise signals added to the system, the closed-loop model is given as follows:
The
state-space model is:
The new space model can be defined as:
-
C.
Fuzzy linear quadratic Gaussian controller (FLQG)
This FLQG controller structure is based on the combination of the LQG controller and FLQR controller. However, for certain cases, the state variables are not measured for real experimental systems. However, it is possible to estimate the non-measurable state by using the measurement data if the system is observable [
25]. Furthermore, an estimation of state variables may be preferred because of the noisy measurement data. The structure of FLQG is obtained by adding the KF to the FLQR, as can be seen in
Figure 8. However, the KF is obligatory if some state variables needed for the FLQR are estimated. KF estimates the state variables according to the DLRIP system input and the measured output variables. The estimated state variables are the input of the FLQR controller. A block diagram of FLQG controller is shown in
Figure 8.
Finally, the penalisation rate gains’ numerical values were obtained, as shown in
Table 2. The scenarios are cheap or expensive, and ignore any other state; they only interest one state. The penalisation rate of all linear quadratic regulators is positive, whereas linear quadratic Gaussian penalisation rates are positive diagonally, but are negative in the upper and lower matrices. These values suggest that some states are at the saddle point (see section 3.4) because LQG is sensitive to the dynamic nature of the WMRS. It is good that the wheeled mobile robot is stable at its core, but is still sensitive to very small changes in the dynamics system. The negative values in the penalisation rate indicated that the position and orientation responses are saddle points near zero. The positive penalisation rate indicated that all states are convergent in the region around zero.
3.5. Lorenz System and Its Analyses for the WMRS Controller Framework
Based on the penalisation rate numerical values, it is necessary to look at the Lorenz law of attraction since, as reflected in
Table 2, the values of the LQG are diagonally positive, but the upper and lower matrices are negative. It is therefore mandatory to relate them to the Lorenz law of attraction. The Lorenz law of attraction is considered a benchmark system in chaotic dynamics in that it displays extraordinary sensitivity to initial conditions and the strange attractor phenomenon. Even though the system tends to be stable, it is indeed possible to convert a strange attractor into a saddle point. Looking at the dynamics systems of WMRS after applying the controller’s penalisation rate, the following implications were identified. In order to observe the controller behaviours, let
near
where
. The dynamics systems of the WMRS were obtained with the expense and costs of linear quadratic Gaussian (LQG), because it made the dynamics system a saddle point. Zoom into fixed point, the dynamics of the position and orientation in a linear region can be seen. Let us assume
Setting a higher order at zero, it gives:
Then,
(diagonal decoupled system) .
where
is the eigen vector of the WMRS dynamics.
This means that if any initial condition
is taken, WMRS dynamics could be plotted in a time framework, showing how it would work with time using WMRS dynamics.
is taking the initial condition map into an eigen values coordinate system, where it is necessary to advance the system
, that is
Now that the system is in the eigen value coordinate system, it should be mapped into the original equation (45). To strengthen the concept, consider the response of the WMRS, which is obtained from its dynamic equations [
16]:
The objective is to find:
as . However, this approach does not work if is replaced by .
Taking into consideration the dynamics of the WMRS, let the errors of WMRS be:
Then
,
,
where
, and
, which implies that
Let
where V is a positive definite
except at , , and This confirms that the WMRS dynamics system is stable.