Calibration of Differential Wheeled Mobile Robot with Trajectory Measuring Device
Description
Determining the precise position of a differential wheeled mobile robot requires further development of various sensor systems and localization methods. To achieve precise localization, odometry, which is based on measuring the angular velocity of its wheels, is primarily used. This article provides a brief overview of odometry methods and their calibration methods. A new method for calibrating a differential wheeled mobile robot using a trajectory measurement device is presented. The robot's trajectory measurement device is developed based on a high-precision rope displacement sensor and an absolute angular encoder. Using a trajectory measurement device during the calibration of a differential wheeled mobile robot facilitates data collection during experimental tests. The proposed method is compared with a differential wheeled mobile robot calibration method for correcting systematic errors along a linear path. The experiment was conducted on a MRTC differential wheeled mobile robot. The robot was calibrated using the developed method, and odometry error improvements were obtained, slightly better than those obtained using the well-known linear path calibration method. The method developed in this paper can be considered a simple and practical tool for calibrating various types of mobile robots.