26th Iranian Conference on Electrical Engineering (ICEE2018)

Self-Tuning Fuzzy PID Control of a Four-Mecanum

Wheel Omni-directional Mobile Platform
Ehsan Malayjerdi
Master of Science in Artificial Intelligence
Islamic Azad University, Mashhad Branch
Mashhad, Iran
Email: malayjerdi@gmail.com
Hadi Kalani
Assistant Professor
Department of Mechanical Engineering
Sadjad University of Technology
Mashhad, Iran
Email: kalani@sadjad.ac.ir
Mohsen Malayjerdi
Master of Science in Mechanical
Engineering
Ferdowsi University of Mashhad
Mashhad, Iran
Email: mohsen.ciw@gmail.com

Abstract— In this paper we restrict our attention to self-tuning
control of a four-Mecanum mobile robot and present detailed
kinematics and controller architecture of a robot. Since the
Mecanum wheels worked based on slipping, therefore, its wheels
may slip due to various floor conditions. During such a slip
condition, Mecanum wheeled robot moves in unexpected path. In
order to reduce this error, four incremental encoders are utilized.
Then the fuzzy PID controller is described. This proposed
controller can be implemented in microcontroller easily. Finally,
the merit of the controller is investigated experimentally. Results
show that the Self-Tuning Fuzzy PID Control and encoder sensors
provide a reasonable structure for Mecanum wheel robot.
Keywords- Fuzzy Logic Controller, self-tuning controller,
Mecanum Wheeled Robot.
I. INTRODUCTION
Nowadays, Omni-directional mobile robots have been
developed for research purposes and played main role in both
academia and industry [1 and 2]. In comparison with many
kinds of omnidirectional wheels, Mecanum wheels have been
shown more to be effective in driving vehicles to achieve Omni-
directional capability. These wheels are utilized in service robot
such as intelligent wheelchairs, nursing-care robots and mobile
manipulator [3-6]. In spite of the advantage such as the
omnidirectional motion property, the Mecanum wheel has the
unavoidable vibration due to its structural shape [7-9]. These
vibrations can reduce the positioning accuracy. However, new
applications in Mecanum wheels cause they are demanding
more due to its additional maneuverability and efficiency.
Generally the Mecanum wheel is constructed from several
passive rollers, forks, and a hub or disk. The hub is connected
to the actuating motor. It supports the forks and rollers. The
passive rollers generate the driving force by the contact with the
ground. These features are gained at the expense of increased
mechanical complexity (kinematics and dynamics analysis) and
increased complexity in control. The issues of kinematics and
dynamics of Mecanum wheel are studied in [10-11]. These
mathematical models will be utilized to achieve optimum
control of the mobile robot as a service robot [12]. When the
robot moves, the wheels often slip. During such slips, the real
position and orientation deviate from the planned. To overcome
this problem, many researches attempt to detect the slippage
and control the robot position [13-16]. Fahmizal et al. [13]
proposed a trajectory tracking and heading adjustment systems
of a Mecanum wheel robot using fuzzy logic controller (FLC)
and inertia measurement unit (IMU) sensor. They showed that
the FLC system and the IMU sensor provide a robust navigation
scheme for Mecanum wheel robot. Tsai et al. [14] suggested a
nonsingular terminal sliding mode control using fuzzy wavelet
networks for trajectory tracking of a Mecanum wheel robot.
Viboonchaicheep et al. [15] used a novel methodology of
position rectification for Mecanum-wheeled omni-directional
vehicles. They used the formulation of unique kinematics
equation, dynamics equation and state equation. Chang et al.
[16] derived nonlinear stable adaptive control law based on
complete dynamics model of a four-Mecanum-wheeled robot
using the back stepping method via Lyapunov stability theory.
The rest of the manuscript is organized as follows. In
Section II, the SADJAD robot I is introduced and the kinematic
model of it is determined. Then the self-tuning control is
described in Section III. Section IV presents several
experimental results which show the effectiveness and merit of
the proposed methods. Section V concludes the paper with
remarks and suggestions for future works.
II. FOUR-MECANUM WHEEL OMNI-DIRECTIONAL MOBILE
PLATFORM
A. SADJAD Mobile Robot I
SADJAD mobile robot I, shown in Fig. 1a, is the first
generation Omni-directional mobile platform designed in the
SADJAD Robotics Research Center. It is made of four
Mecanum Wheel. Each Mecanum wheel is operated by BLDC
motor. The robot in its fully flat configuration has width 300
mm, height 60 mm and length 500 mm. The overall weight of
the robot, including all motors and all other components is 4.6
kg. The locomotion algorithms are implemented in a micro-
controller, STM32F4 discovery. The mentioned components
are shown in Fig. 1b, schematically.

978-1-5386-4916-9/18/$31.00 ©2018 IEEE

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26th Iranian Conference on Electrical Engineering (ICEE2018)

(a)

Fig. 2. Kinematics of mobile robot

Rw    
vx 3
4 
g1 ! g 2 ! g 3 ! g 4 
R
4 
v y 3 w #g1 ! g2 ! g3 # g4 
Rw
mz 3
4(L !W ) 
#g1 ! g2 # g3 ! g4 
(1)
or

¾ Î ¾1 1 #(L !W ) Î
¿g1 Ï ¿ Ï ¾v x Î
¿g Ï 1 ¿1 # 1 ( L !W ) Ï ¿ Ï
¿ 2Ï 3 ¿ Ï ¿v y Ï
¿g Ï Rw ¿1 #1 #(L !W ) Ï ¿ Ï
¿ 3Ï ¿ Ï ¿m z Ï
¿g4 Ï ¿1 1 ( L !W ) Ï À Ð
(b) À Ð À Ð
Fig. 1. Mecanum wheel Robot. (a) The overall view of the constructed
robot and (b) The detail view of key components of the mobile robot
Where Rw is radius of Mecanum wheel and gi (i 3 1, 2,..., 4)
B. Vehicle Kinematics is the angular velocity of the wheel. Moreover, L and W are the
A Omni-directional mobile robot consisting four Mecanum distances between wheel axis and body center of the robot. See
wheel is depicted in Fig. 2. To define a kinematics model for the Fig. 2. The values of v x , v y and m z indicate the generalized
robot, we attach a coordinate system to center of the robot. The
velocity of the center point of the robot. The number of each
inverse kinematics (IK) equations are employed to obtain the
wheel shows in parentheses.
needed angular speed of each motor to achieve desired motion
of the Mecanum wheel mobile platform. Although, the direct III. CONTROL SYSTEM ARCHTITECTURE
kinematics (DK) equations are utilized to determine path of the
robot based on the specified rotational speeds of the motors. The A. Overall system Architucture
IK and DK of the Mecanum robot are obtained by Eq. (1). The Figure 3 indicates the proposed structure of the self-tuning
details are reported in [15]. Here, for convenience, the contact
fuzzy PID controller. The feedback error e(t) and the derivative
between the wheel and the supporting plane is characterized by
of error de(t)/dt are the two inputs to the fuzzy logic inference
the condition that the wheel is rolling without slip.
engine. The main three PID Coefficients ( K p , K i and K d ) are
adjusted by using fuzzy map, which provide a nonlinear
mapping from the error and derivative of error to PID
parameters.
B. Self-Tuning Fuzzy PID Controller
Fuzzy PID control is a kind of nonlinear control which has
the advantages of both fuzzy control and PID control. In this
paper the PID coefficients are adjusted by fuzzy logic.

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Fundamentally, fuzzy rules play a key role in fuzzy control due

to the direct effects for fuzzy inferences. Here, these rules
designed are based on the characteristics of the Mecanum wheel
and properties of the PID controller. The ranges K p and K d
are described in ¾ÀK p ,min , K p ,max ÎÐ and ¾ Î
ÀK d ,min , K d ,max Ð ,
respectively. These ranges are determined experimentally with
trial and error. The K p and K d parameters are normalized (a)

into the range between zero and one as follow

 
K pw 3 K p # K p ,min / K p ,max # K p ,min  (2)
K w 3 K
d d # K d ,min  / K d ,max # K d ,min 
The integral gain constant is determined by
K i 3 K p2 / W K d  (3)
(b)
In this study, we assume W 3 1 . The parameters K pw and K dw Fig. 4. Membership functions for (a) e ( k ) and (b) de (k ) / dt

are defined as a set of fuzzy rules of the form

if e ( k ) is A i and de (k ) / dt is B i , then K pw is
(4)
C i and K dw is D i , i=1,2,…,m.

Where A i , B i ,C i and D i are fuzzy sets. The membership

functions (MF) of e ( k ) and de (k ) / dt are indicate in Fig. 4a
and 4b, respectively. Here, N represents negative, P positive,
ZO approximately zero, S small, B big. Thus NS used for
negative-small, PB for positive big, and so on. The fuzzy sets
C i and D i are either Big or Small and are indicated by the Fig.5. Membership functions for K wp and K dw [17]

membership functions shown in Fig. 5.

To achieve the reference trajectory, a total of twenty five
rules are defined for K pw and K dw in TABLE I and TABLE II,
respectively. These rules make the relation between error and
derivation of error in terms of linguistic values. The firing value
of the ith rule, ci , in Eq. (4), is obtained by the product of the
MF values in the antecedent part of the rule:

c i 3 c Ai [e (k )]¬ c Bi [de (k ) / dt ] (5)

where c A i and c Bi are the MF value of the fuzzy set of A i

and B i which given a value of e ( k ) and de (k ) / dt ,
respectively. Then Based on ci , the values of K pw and K dw , for
each rule are obtained from their corresponding MFs. The
implication process of a fuzzy rule is described in [17]. Next,
the defuzzification yields the following:
Fig. 3. Block diagram of fuzzy PID control scheme n
K pw 3 ºc K w
i 31
i pi
(6)
n
K dw 3 ºc K w
i 31
i di

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26th Iranian Conference on Electrical Engineering (ICEE2018)

w and K diw
Where K pi are the value of K pw and K dw
corresponding to the ci for ith rule, respectively. Finally, the
PID parameters calculated from the Eq. (2). All mentioned
process is prepared in STM32 discovery. This experimental
applied to microcontroller using the C programming. In
programming the microcontroller used a methodology that is
described in [18].

TABLE I. FUZZY RULE TABLE FOR VARIABLE K wp

ࢋሶ
NB NS ZO PS PB
NB B B B B B
NS S B B B S
e ZO S S B S S Fig. 6. The schematic map for robot navigation
PS S B B B S
PB B B B B B

TABLE II. FUZZY RULE TABLE FOR VARIABLE K dw

ࢋሶ
NB NS ZO PS PB
NB S S S S S
NS B B S B B
e ZO B B B B B
PS B B S B B
PB S S S S S

IV. SIMULATION, EXPERMIMENT AND DISCUSSION

This section presents the ability of proposed fuzzy-PID
controller on robot motion according to the trajectory in Fig.6.
To approach desired velocity, in this study, each wheel control
separately based on self-tuning controller. The actual error,
taken as the difference between desired angular velocity of each
wheels and the corresponding actual one (Eq. 6), and the delta
error, taken as the difference between current and previous
errors, are used as fuzzy logic inputs.
e i 3 gi ,act # gi ,des , i 3 1, 2,..., 4 (6)

where i is the number of wheel, gi ,act and gi ,des are the
actual and desired angular velocity of ith wheel, respectively.
Figure 6 shows the schematic path of mobile robot to
approach its destination. The number in each figure shows the
order of the movement. From number 0 to 1 and 3 to 4, the robot
moves toward. From number of 1 to 2 and 6 to 7, it changes its
orientation without transfer. From 2 to 3 and 4 to 5, the robot
moves diagonally. Finally from 5 to 6 and 7 to 0, it moves in
side direction. The desired angular velocity in whole simulation
is 2.5 rad/s. To reach this navigation, the angular velocity of
each of Mecanum wheel changed as Fig. 7. The corresponding
number of each wheel indicates in Fig. 2, in parenthesis.
Fig. 7. Angular velocity of each wheel. The m i indicates the angular
velocity of ith wheel.
Based on Eq. (1), the reference velocity of mobile robot is
obtained during experiment as Fig. 8. This figure shows, when
the only PID is used, there are significant errors between
desired and real velocities in during experiments. But slight
errors during the motion are happened by using Fuzzy PID. As
it is expected, the maximum errors are happened when the
velocity of wheels are changed. Therefore, results demonstrated
that Fuzzy PID method is better controller than conventional
PID methodology to approach the mobile robot navigation.

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Fig. 8. Linear and angular velocities of Mecanum wheel
V. CONCLUSION
In this study, a self-tuning controller is used to achieve
navigation and stable motion of a Mecanum wheel robot. To do
this, a fuzzy proportional integral derivative (PID) is employed
which gains of PID can be tuned by implementing the fuzzy
rules. The proposed controller is evaluated using a map for
Mecanum wheel robot navigation. Result showed the Fuzzy-
PID method is capable of guaranteeing the robot to achieve
stabilization and trajectory tracking. The study of controller for
Mecanum wheel robot is significant as it can be employed in
many applications like narrow spaces or crowded environments
such as hospitals and elderly care facilities.
Our main contribution is to investigate a fuzzy gain
scheduling method of PID controller for Mecanum wheel robot.
In the future, we will plan to use this robot in augmented reality
(AR) by employing the proposed controller. We will develop a
path following algorithm that allows the Omni-directional
mobile robot to autonomously navigate to a desired location as
it is commanded by a user through an AR interface.
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