NavStack with Skid Steering robots

Question

I am migrating from a differential drive design to a skid steering design for my robot, and I want to know how easy would it be to use the NavStack with skid steering. Would there be any problems in terms of localization and things like that?

If I let two wheels on the same side of my robot (two on left side and two on the right side) maintain same velocity and acceleration, would the unicycle model of a differential drive robot still apply for skid steering?

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Originally posted by Pototo on ROS Answers with karma: 803 on 2014-08-12

Post score: 2

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Original comments

Comment by ahendrix on 2014-08-12:
Are you using the nav stack with your current, diff-drive robot?

Answer 1

With two wheels on each side, your robot's center of rotation will be unstable due to slippage, and even minor variations in your terrain will cause dramatic shifts. This means your odometry will drift much further than under differential drive, making your other information sources even more important for localization - an IMU will go a long way towards mitigating the slippage.

You will have to adjust (increase) the (co)variance values in the odometry messages, as well as the proper parameters for nodes like AMCL that only read tf data.

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Originally posted by paulbovbel with karma: 4518 on 2014-08-12

This answer was ACCEPTED on the original site

Post score: 0

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Original comments

Comment by paulbovbel on 2014-08-12:
As far as the unicycle model, with slippage you can just imagine that it's simultaneously a pogo stick :)