Tracking gradients of artificial potential fields with non-holonomic mobile robots

Abstract

Artificial potential fields have enjoyed growing popularity for path planning and collision avoidance both of robot manipulators and mobile robots. Although many artificial potential fields have been proposed. Few works discuss suitable control for tracking the gradient of an artificial potential field. This deficit is surprising since good tracking control is vital for successful implementation of the artificial potential field method. This paper extends previous results of a sliding mode control strategy for fully actuated holonomic robots to gradient tracking of non-holonomic mobile robots.