Super‐twisting sliding mode trajectory tracking adaptive control of wheeled mobile robots with disturbance observer

Abstract

Abstract This article aims at the difficulties of wheeled mobile robots (WMR) system with wheeled slipping and control backlash in trajectory tracking. A novel sliding mode control strategy is proposed. For estimating the lumped disturbance, an adaptive sliding mode disturbance observer is constructed and achieves the finite‐time convergence of estimate error. For the purpose of accelerating the trajectory tracking, a novel arctangent terminal sliding mode surface is designed. To overcome the control chattering, a novel super‐twisting sliding mode controller is constructed which makes the control effect continuous and achieves finite‐time tracking of virtual reference velocities. The asymptotic convergence of trajectory tracking error is guaranteed by the Lyapunov stability theory. The simulation and comparison results of a WMR system demonstrate the validity of the proposed scheme for trajectory tracking.