A Study on ROS-based Odometry System for 4WD with Ackermann Steering using Wheel Encoder and IMU

Abstract

Ackermann steering based 4WD (4 Wheel Drive) vehicle is one of the most common structures in automobile and robotics industries. Unlike 2WD (2 Wheel Drive) vehicle, which is holonomic, Ackermann steering based 4WD vehicle is non-holonomic. It requires different approaches and techniques for odometry, mapping, and autonomous driving. In this paper, we propose 4WD Ackermann steering odometry system using wheel encoder and IMU. HW of this system is built on 4WD RC car that has a similar internal structure and mechanism as an actual car. This system runs on ROS-based program that uses various sensor processing and control packages for odometry. In order to check the performance of the proposed odometry system, Rviz is used for path trajectory visualization.