  Recently, a trend is emerging toward human-servicing autonomous mobile
robots, with diverse applications including delivery of supplies in hospitals,
hotels, or labs where personnel are scarce, or reacting to indoor emergencies.
However, existing autonomous mobile robot (AMR) motion is slow and inefficient,
a foundational barrier to proliferation of human-servicing applications. This
research has developed a motion control architecture that demonstrates the
potential of several algorithms for increasing speed and efficiency. These
include a novel PI(t)D(t) controller that sets integral and derivative gains as
functions of time, and motion-profiling applied for holonomic motion. Resulting
performance indicates potential for faster, more efficient AMRs, that maintain
high levels of accuracy and repeatability. The hope is that this research can
serve as a proof of concept for faster motion-control, to remove a key barrier
to further use of human-servicing mobile robots.
