Control of nonholonomic autonomous vehicles and their formations

Abstract

This paper analyzes several control schemes for nonholonomic vehicles (mobile robots with differential rear wheels) in stabilization and leader - follower manoeuvres. Extensive simulation studies have been conducted to evaluate the performance of existing control schemes and to test new control schemes suggested in this paper. The results for nonholomic vehicles show that polar coordinates control is effective for a variety of initial conditions of the follower, both in stabilization and in tracking.