Omnidirectional mobile robots, mechanisms and navigation approaches

The omnidirectional drive is a popular challenging trend in today's mobile robotics where different areas such as swarm, humanoid, legged, train-based, underwater, air flying, and wheeled mobile robotics have been involved. Among them all, Omnidirectional Wheeled Mobile Robots (OMR) due to their low cost, simplicity, and their power in navigation have attracted a significant number of applications in various environments. Different wheel mechanisms including different mechanical wheel designs and various wheel topologies, and different navigation approaches, including control, driving, path planning methods and etc., are designed to achieve omnidirectional drive with different characteristics. For instance, some works attempt to reach a better speed, some others increase the robot's payload capacity, some works improve the motion stabilization and some others deal with uncertainty, vibration, slippage, and etc. In this paper, we present a review of the most effective omnidirectional wheel mechanisms and present the main challenges and navigation approaches that play important roles in OMR development. The important background works regarding each wheel mechanism are presented, the most important wheel mechanisms are presented and the current trending approaches are presented in order to assist designers and researchers to select appropriate mechanism and control approach fit to their requirements.