Dynamic Modeling and Tracking Control of a Nonholonomic Wheeled Mobile Manipulator with Dual Arms Ching-Chih Tsai & Meng-Bi Cheng & Shui-Chun Lin Received: 15 July 2006 / Accepted: 31 July 2006 / Published online: 31 October 2006 # Springer Science + Business Media B.V. 2006 Abstract This paper presents methodologies for dynamic modeling and trajectory tracking of a nonholonomic wheeled mobile manipulator (WMM) with dual arms. The complete dynamic model of such a manipulator is easily established using the Lagrange’ s equation and MATHEMATICA. The structural properties of the overall system along with its sub- systems are also well investigated and then exploited in further controller synthesis. The derived model is shown valid by reducing it to agree well with the mobile platform model. In order to solve the path tracking control problem of the wheeled mobile manipulator, a novel kinematic control scheme is proposed to deal with the nonholonomic constraints. With the backstepping technique and the filtered-error method, the nonlinear tracking control laws for the mobile manipulator system are constructed based on the Lyapunov stability theory. The proposed control scheme not only achieves simultaneous trajectory and velocity tracking, but also compensates for the dynamic interactions caused by the motions of the mobile platform and the two onboard manipulators. Simulation results are performed to illustrate the efficacy of the proposed control strategy. Key words backstepping control . Lyapunov stability . mobile robot . nonholonomic system 1 Introduction Over the past and present decades, there has been increasingly interest in the challenging field of wheeled mobile manipulators [1–6]. A wheeled mobile manipulator typically consists of a mobile platform with wheeled mobility configuration and one or two more robotic arm(s) mounted on the mobile platform. Such a manipulator has been extensively used in many applications such as manufacturing, warehouse, health-care, hazardous exploration and etc. Due to the mobility of the platform and the manipulability of the arm(s), the wheeled mobile manipulator is capable of performing dexterous manipulation tasks in a much larger workspace than a fixed-based manipulator. However, it will give rise to many new challenges J Intell Robot Syst (2006) 47: 317–340 DOI 10.1007/s10846-006-9072-2 C.-C. Tsai (*) : M.-B. Cheng : S.-C. Lin Department of Electrical Engineering, National Chung Hsing University, Taichung 40227, Taiwan e-mail: cctsai@dragon.nchu.edu.tw brought to you by CORE View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk provided by National Chung Hsing University Institutional Repository