Performance- and Mechanical-Work-Aware Control Reconfiguration of a Mecanum-Wheeled Mobile Robot After Complete Wheel Actuator Failure

Wheel-actuator failure can compromise the trajectory-tracking capability of omnidirectional mobile robots, potentially interrupting material transport in automated warehouses. This study investigates control allocation reconfiguration to maintain trajectory tracking of a four-Mecanum-wheeled mobile robot after a single wheel actuator completely loses its torque-generation capability. Assuming that the failed actuator has already been detected and isolated, the proposed approach retains the nominal trajectory-tracking controller and redistributes the required generalized forces and yaw moment among the remaining actuators. The feasibility of post-fault tracking is examined through the rank of the available allocation matrix and the actuator torque limits. Five operating configurations are compared in simulation, including healthy operation, unreconfigured operation after failure, three-actuator reconfiguration, and two reduced two-actuator configurations. The achieved results demonstrate that, under the investigated simulation conditions, actuator-aware control allocation can preserve both position and orientation tracking after a single actuator failure without retuning the nominal controller, supporting continued robot motion during a post-fault operating interval.