TIME-OPTIMAL TRAJECTORIES OF A DIFFERENTIAL DRIVE ROBOT

Abstract

The determination of optimal trajectories of non-holonomic systems and of structure-variant (hybrid) mechanical systems are active research areas. These optimization problems belong to the class of mathemat-ical problems with equilibrium constraints (MPEC). In this report the time-optimal trajectories of a structure-variant differential-drive robot will be presented by making use of recent developments in non-smooth analysis and mechanics. The trajectories will be deter-mined by the direct shooting method, which performs the integrations of the dynamical system based on the time-stepping scheme. Key words non-smooth, hybrid, non-holonomic, optimal control,