Comparison of slip-compensated odometry for tracked, four- and six-wheel vehicles

Wheel slippage is mostly an unwanted but sometimes inevitable disturbance, especially in mobile robots with over-constrained suspension or operating on slippery surfaces. Improving odometry alone can increase overall localization accuracy, especially when other sources of position information are unavailable. There are several publications dealing with slippage detection and odometry correction, however, they are mostly related to identification of surface for single specific robot type and they require external measurement system for tests. This paper presents a methodology and experiment comparing slip-compensated odometry and tries to extrapolate it to three different suspensions. The main idea behind this article was to check, if different mechanical suspensions with the same kinematic structure (skid-steering), could achieve similar localization accuracy according to the same slip compensation method and using only onboard sensors. The research platform was a custom modular robot. Its chassis allows it to swap the suspension to skid steer six- and four-wheel and tracks. Four chapters of the paper are are organized as follows: in the Introduction, the problem is described in mathematical formulas, then the experiment setup, process and a method for calculating an algorithm-specific coefficient are discussed, followed by presentation of results and summary.