Motion control of a car-like vehicle with front driving wheels using an approximate decoupling based on the transverse function approach

Abstract

This paper is focused on motion control of a nonholonomic car-like robot. The main idea of the proposed control method is based on an approximate decoupling of phase-constrained kinematics in order to imitate an omnidirectional robot. In order to facilitate the feedback design, the original kinematics is simplified and represented by a nilpotent homogeneous locally equivalent control system. Next, the algorithm exploiting transverse functions is formulated. It guarantees locally stable tracking of any trajectory which can be generated by an external navigator. The theoretical description of the control method is complemented by results of numerical simulations conducted for specific motion scenarios.