Using Wheel Slippage for Improved Maneuverability of 4 Wheel Steering Vehicles

In the domain of land vehicles, the researches which focus on the subject of slippage mostly develop methods for detecting and avoiding slippage or compensating for slippage. Even when slippage is considered as a potential advantage, this is mostly researched for high speeds. This paper proposes a method that uses slippage as an advantage even at low speeds. This is achieved by using the nonholonomic properties of a 4WS (4 wheel steering) vehicle with independent front and rear drives. It is experimentally shown that controlled low speed slippage can be advantegous for certain tasks by comparing the vehicle behavior to a similar 2WS (2 wheel steering) vehicle which cannot leverage slippage.