State Machine Model of the Operation Control of a Differential-Drive Mobile Robot

Mobile robot controllers are often complex due to their multi-layered architecture and the numerous inputs and outputs handled at each layer. This work models the lowest level of a differential-drive mobile robot's controller stack using a set of state machines, demonstrating how this approach streamlines control system development. This level handles robot locomotion and sensor data acquisition. The resulting state machines are easily implemented in any procedural language, including C++ and Lua. We use C++ to program controllers for actual Arduino-based robots and Lua to program models of such robots in the CoppeliaSim simulator. Both real and virtual robots have been used in an Embedded Systems course at our university since 2011, with continuous improvements.