Combining Two Control Techniques for the Fast Movement of a Two-Wheel Mobile Robot

Abstract

Control of two-wheel mobile robots (TWMRs) is quite a challenging subject for researchers and educators. Control performance of TWMRs is to satisfy both stable balancing and position tracking simultaneously. When the TWMR is moving fast in forward direction with a proportional-derivative (PD) control method, fast movement to the desired position can be achieved. However, larger oscillations in both the balancing angle and position occur. The time-delayed control (TDC) method reduces the oscillation, but its response is relatively slow. The goal of this paper is to provide a solution to satisfy both stable balancing and position for fast forward movements. This paper presents a control fusion approach between a PD control method and a TDC method to make the performance better. Two controllers are fused together with different weighting factors on the basis of a sigmoidal function to satisfy the control performance. Experimental studies are conducted to validate the proposed control approach.