Evaluating the mobility of a wheeled robot using dynamic modeling *

—This paper describes a multiple criteria, statistical technique for mobile robot evaluation. The evaluation method measures the time and energy costs of a particular class of exploratory mission. The method is implemented in the special case of a four-wheeled mobile robot in the laboratory which was made to execute several (approximately 100) instances of the mission. It is proposed that a validated, dynamic model of the robot embedded in a simulated mission scenario be used to study alternate robot designs in a small 'neighborhood' of the existing physical system. Such a simulation was built and is described here. Results from trials with the physical robot and its simulated counterpart are compared and shown to agree well. The simulation is used to evaluate designs not constructed in the laboratory and the results are discussed.