Robust Tracking Control Using Fuzzy Disturbance Observer for Wheeled Mobile Robots with Skidding and Slipping

Abstract

This paper proposes a robust tracking controller based on the Fuzzy Disturbance Observer (FDO) for a Wheeled Mobile Robot (WMR) with unknown skidding and slipping. The proposed method provides disturbance-free techniques for stability analysis. In our previous work [ 1 ], we proposed an extended state-observer approach to robust tracking control for wheeled mobile robots with skidding and slipping. Even though satisfying performances were shown and the proposed method was verified in [ 1 ], the derivatives of disturbance should go to zero as time passes in order to guarantee performance. This is a very critical assumption. The method proposed in this paper overcomes this problem using universal approximation with a fuzzy model. Thus, the condition that disturbance should disappear with time is not required anymore. Furthermore, the proposed method can be used more widely than that shown in the previous work. This is guaranteed by a Lyapunov-theory-based stability analysis, and performance is verified by simulation results.