Velocity-Scheduling Control for a Unicycle Mobile Robot: Theory and Experiments

Abstract

Improvement over classical dynamic feedback linearization for a unicycle mobile robots is proposed. Compared to classical extension, the technique uses a higher-dimensional state extension, which allows rejecting a constant disturbance on the robot rotational axis. The proposed dynamic extension acts as a velocity scheduler that specifies, at each time instant, the ideal translational velocity that the robot should have. By using a higher-order extension, both the magnitude and the orientation of the velocity vector can be generated, which introduces robustness in the control scheme. Stability for both asymptotic convergence to a point and trajectory tracking is proven. The theoretical results are illustrated first in simulation, and then experimentally on the autonomous mobile robot <i xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Fouzy</i> <i xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">III</i> .