Smooth Motion Generation for Unicycle Mobile Robots Via Dynamic Path Inversion

Abstract

A new motion-generation approach is proposed for wheeled mobile robots described by the unicycle kinematic model. This approach permits the generation of smooth continuous-acceleration controls using a dynamic path-inversion procedure that exploits the concept of G/sup 3/ -paths, i.e., Cartesian paths with third-order geometric continuity (both the curvature function and its derivative, with respect to the arc length, are continuous). The exposed steering method is well suited to be adopted for the robot's iterative steering within a supervisory control architecture for sensor-based autonomous navigation. A worked example illustrates the approach.