Research on Trajectory Planning and Tracking Methods for Coal Mine Mobile Robots

Coal Mine Mobile Robots (CMRRs) are generally large in size and inertia, while narrow laneway space and bumpy terrain pose great challenges to CMRR’s planning and control. Aiming at the trajectory planning and tracking problems of CMRR, a new trajectory class MINCO is derived in detail based on the properties of differential flat systems. A trajectory planning method based on MINCO trajectory and safety corridor constraints constructed with underground environmental constraints is further proposed. A trajectory tracking method based on model predictive control (MPC) is further proposed. The prediction model of MPC is constructed by a kinematics model and transformed into a standard quadratic programming problem according to the cost function of a trajectory tracking target. Finally, large quantities of field tests were carried out for the proposed approaches. The results show that the proposed planning algorithm based on MINCO trajectory can achieve good avoidance effects within 10 planning attempts in different obstacle scenarios, and the trajectory is smoother compared to the Fast-Planner algorithm, with shorter trajectory length and less planning time. The tracking error of MPC is always less than 0.05 m in different underground scenarios, having a more adaptable trajectory tracking effect than PID.