Parking of nonholonomic mobile robots via switched control in the discrete time domain

Abstract

Due to nonholonomic constraints, it is challenging to study parking of mobile robots, especially in the discrete time domain. In this paper, a switched controller is designed in the discrete time domain for the parking of mobile robots towards a target pose. The proposed controller is implemented by using the concept of a sequence of discrete time instances. The angular velocity of the robot is fixed between two discrete time instances to guarantee the controllability of the error dynamics. Moreover, the conventional pole assignment is employed to asymptotically stabilize the system. Meanwhile, instead of moving towards the target pose, the mobile robot is driven to approach the intermediated poses, which are constructed using positions of the robot at a predefined set of discrete time instances and the target pose. The introduction of the time-varying intermediated poses reduces the risk of high gain. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed switched controller for parking of mobile robots.