Fuzzy-Based Fault-Tolerant Control for Omnidirectional Mobile Robot

The motion-planning problem is well known in robotics; it aims to find a free-obstacle path from a starting point to a destination. To make use of actuation generosity and the fuzzy fast response behavior compared to other non-linear controllers, a fuzzy-based fault-tolerant control for an omnidirectional mobile robot with four Mecanum wheels is proposed. The objective is to provide the robot with an online scheme to control the robot motion while moving toward the final destination with avoiding obstacles in its environment and providing an adaptive solution for a combination of one or combination of the wheel’s faults. The faults happen when the wheel does not receive the control command signal from the controller; in this case, the robot can rotate freely due to the interaction with the ground. The principle of fuzzy-based control proposed by Sugeno is used to develop the motion controller. The motion controller consists of two main controllers: the Run-To-Goal, and the obstacle-avoidance controller. The outputs of these two controllers are superposed to get the net potential force on the robot. By its simplicity, the fuzzy controller can be suitable for online applications (online path planning in our case). To the best of our knowledge, this is the first fuzzy-based fault-tolerant controller for an omnidirectional robot. The proposed controller is tested by a set of simulation scenarios to check the proposed fuzzy tolerant control. Kuka OmniRob is used as an example of the omnidirectional robot in these simulation runs. Matlab is used to build the fuzzy-based fault-tolerant control, and the 3D simulation is developed on the CoppeliaSim software. We examine five distinct scenarios, each one with a different fault state. In all scenarios, the proposed algorithm could control the robot to reach its final destination with the absence and presence of an obstacle in the workspace, despite actuator faults, without crossing the workspace boundaries.