Abstract
Recently, welfare vehicles are widely used by patients and elders. Many welfare vehicles are restricted to drive indoor or on a flat road. The vehicle with free casters can not be driven well when the road surface is rolling outdoors. To design compact welfare vehicles for outdoor use at low cost, the skid steer mechanism is focused on. The skid steer vehicle (SSV) is well known for its high traveling ability on an off-road. However, the SSV has disadvantage that the maneuvering assistance is required because its steering is highly affected by road condition. This study aims a steering assistance of SSV for patients and elders by using Model Error Compensator (MEC) that suppresses the modeling error by traditional PID control. The proposed controller consists of MEC and Extended Kalman Filter to reduce the sensor and the system noise assuming the undulating and skiddy roads. The effectiveness of the proposed control system is verified by the driving simulation considering the drivers weight and the road conditions.
