Search Results (30)

This study aims to explore the tracking control challenge in a swarm of multiple nonholonomic wheeled mobile robots (NWMRs) by utilizing a distributed leader–follower strategy grounded in the cascade system theory. Firstly, the kinematic control law is developed for the leader by constructing a sliding surface based on the error tracking model with a virtual reference trajectory. Secondly, a communication topology with the desired formation pattern is modeled for the multiple robots by using the graph theory. Further, in the leader–follower NWMR system, each follower lacks direct access to the leader’s information. Therefore, a novel distributed-based controller by PD-based controller for the follower is developed, enabling each follower to obtain the leader’s information. Thirdly, for each case, we give a further analysis of the closed-loop system to guarantee uniform global asymptotic stability with the conditions based on the cascade system theory. Finally, the trajectory tracking performance of the proposed controllers for the NWMR system is illustrated through simulation results. The leader robot achieved a low RMSE of 1.6572 (Robot 1), indicating accurate trajectory tracking. Follower robots showed RMSEs of 2.6425 (Robot 2), 3.0132 (Robot 3), and 4.2132 (Robot 3), reflecting minor variations due to the distributed control strategy and local disturbances. Full article

Nonholonomoic mobile robots (NMRs) are widely used in logistics transportation and industrial production, with motion control remaining a key focus in current WMR research. However, most previously developed controllers assume ideal conditions without considering motion slippage. Neglecting slippage factors often leads to reduced control performance, causing instability and deviation from the robot’s path. To address such a challenge, this paper proposes an intelligent method for estimating the longitudinal wheel slip, enabling effective compensation for the adverse effects of slippage. The proposed algorithm relies on the development of an adaptive trajectory tracking controller for the leader robot. This controller enables the leader robot to accurately follow a virtual reference trajectory while estimating the actual slipping ratio with precision. By employing this approach, the mobile robot can effectively address the challenge of wheel slipping and enhance its overall performance. Next, a distributed observer is developed for each NMR that uses both its own and adjacent robot’s information to determine the leader’s state. To solve this difficulty for the follower robot to receive the states of the leader in a large group of robots, distributed formation controllers are designed. Further, Lyapunov stability theory is utilized to analyze the convergence of tracking errors that guarantees multi-robot formation. At last, numerical simulations on a group of NMR are provided to illustrate the performance of the designed controller. The leader robot achieved a low RMSE of 1.7571, indicating accurate trajectory tracking. Follower robots showed RMSEs of 2.7405 (Robot 2), 3.0789 (Robot 4), and 4.3065 (Robot 3), reflecting minor variations due to the distributed control strategy and local disturbances. Full article

This paper presents an obstacle avoidance strategy for mobile manipulators consisting of a robotic arm and a base with a non-holonomic differential wheel system. The algorithm makes it possible to avoid obstacles in a dynamic environment, without planning the path a priori. A series of examples are proposed in simulation using Matlab and analyzed to show how the algorithm works if the obstacle interferes with the manipulator or the base. In addition, the possibility of prioritizing the movement of certain parts of the system using the weighted pseudo-inverse matrix is introduced. In this way, it is possible to give movement priority to the base if it is necessary to move the robot over long distances while keeping the manipulator as still as possible. The use of null space to keep the end-effector stationary while it avoids obstacles is also explored, exploiting the system’s redundancy and allowing the rest of the kinematic chain and the mobile base to move accordingly. Finally, current standards are analyzed and a solution is shown that allows the robot to vary its behavior to avoid obstacles depending on the distance to the target point. Full article

Velocity saturation constraints are a significant issue for wheeled mobile robots (WMRs) when designing kinematics-based control laws. To handle the problem of velocity saturation constraints, a novel monocular visual servoing controller is developed for WMRs to solve tracking problems and enable unknown depth estimation. By analyzing the kinematic model of the robot system and employing the homography decomposition technique, measurable signals are obtained to develop a visual tracking error model for non-holonomic mobile robots. To ensure that the velocity commands are consistently constrained within the allowed limits, a saturation function is employed in the designed visual servoing control law. Furthermore, an adaptive updating law is designed to estimate the unknown depth information. The boundedness of the velocity commands is analyzed to evaluate the saturation performance of the developed visual servoing controller. With the aid of Lyapunov techniques and Barbalat’s lemma, the stability of this scheme is demonstrated. The simulation and experiment verify the performance of the proposed method. Full article

Trajectory tracking control is important in order to realize autonomous driving of mobile robots. From a control standpoint, trajectory tracking can be stated as the problem of stabilizing a tracking error system that describes both position and orientation errors of the mobile robot with respect to a time-parameterized path. In this paper, we address the problem for the trajectory tracking of nonholonomic wheeled mobile robots, and an exponential trajectory tracking controller is designed. The stability analysis is concerned with studying the local exponential stability property of a cascade system, provided that two isolated subsystems are exponentially stable and under certain bound conditions for the interconnection term. A theoretical stability analysis of the dynamic behaviors of the closed-loop system is provided based on the Lyapunov stability theory, and an exponential stability result is proven. An explicit estimate of the set of feasible initial conditions for the error variables is determined. Simulation results for verification of the proposed tracking controller under different operating conditions are given. The obtained results show that the problem of trajectory tracking control of nonholonomic wheeled mobile robots is solved over a large class of reference trajectories with fast convergence and good transient performance. Full article

A tool for path following for a mobile manipulator is herein presented. The control algorithm is obtained by projecting a local frame associated with the robot onto the desired path, thus obtaining a non-orthogonal moving frame. The Serret–Frenet frame moving along the curve is considered as a reference. A curve resulting from the control points of a B-spline in 2D or 3D is investigated as the desired path. It is used to show how the geometric continuity of the path has an impact on the performance of the robot in terms of undesired force spikes. This can be understood by looking at the curvature and, in 3D, at the torsion of the path. These unwanted effects vanish and better performance is achieved thanks to the change of the B-spline order. The theoretical results are confirmed by the simulation study for a mobile manipulator consisting of a non-holonomic wheeled base coupled with a holonomic robotic arm with three degrees of freedom (rotational and prismatic). Full article

A typical orchard’s mechanical operation consists of three or four stages: lining and digging for plantation, moving the seedling from nurseries to the farm, moving the seedling to the planting hole, and planting the seedling in the hole. However, the digging of the planting hole is the most time-consuming operation. In fruit orchards, the use of robots is increasingly becoming more prevalent to increase operational efficiency. They offer practical and effective services to both industry and people, whether they are assigned to plant trees, reduce the use of chemical fertilizers, or carry heavy loads to relieve staff. Robots can operate for extended periods of time and can be highly adept at repetitive tasks like planting many trees. The present study aims to identify the locations for planting trees in orchards using geographic information systems (GISs), to develop an autonomous drilling machine and use the developed robot to open planting holes. There is no comparable study on autonomous hole planting in the literature in this regard. The agricultural mobile robot is a four=wheeled nonholonomic robot with differential steering and forwarding capability to stable target positions. The designed mobile robot can be used in fully autonomous, partially autonomous, or fully manual modes. The drilling system, which is a y-axis shifter driven by a DC motor with a reducer includes an auger with a 2.1 HP gasoline engine. SOLIDWORKS 2020 software was used for designing and drawing the mobile robot and drilling system. The Microsoft Visual Basic.NET programming language was used to create the robot navigation system and drilling mechanism software. The cross-track error (XTE), which determines the distances between the actual and desired holes positions, was utilized to analyze the steering accuracy of the mobile robot to the drilling spots. Consequently, the average of the arithmetic means was determined to be 4.35 cm, and the standard deviation was 1.73 cm. This figure indicates that the suggested system is effective for drilling plant holes in orchards. Full article

The main objective of this work is to address problems related to the speed control of mobile robots with non-holonomic constraints and differential traction—specifically, robots for football games in the VSS (Very Small Size) category. To achieve this objective, an implementation and comparison is carried out between two control strategies: an adaptive control strategy by gain scheduling and a fuzzy multimodel intelligent control strategy. The mathematical models of the wheel motors for each operating range are approximated by a first-order system since data acquisition is performed using the step response. Tuning of the proportional and integral gains of the local controllers is carried out using the root locus technique in discrete time. For each mathematical model obtained for an operating range, a local controller is tuned. Finally, with the local controllers in hand, the implementation of and comparison between the gain scheduling adaptive control strategy and the fuzzy multimodel intelligent control strategy are carried out, in which the control strategies are programmed into the low-level code of a non-holonomic robot with a differential drive to verify the performance of the speed tracking dynamics imposed on the wheel motors to improve robot navigation during a robot football match. Full article

Currently, most assumptions in nonholonomic mobile robot controllers indicate that the robot velocity can become significantly large and that the robot actuators are able to generate the necessary level of torque input. Based on the sliding mode control theory, this paper develops a new framework to handle the control problem of a wheeled robot dynamics model with constrained velocity and torque. Through rigorous theoretical analysis and extensive simulations, we demonstrate that the proposed controller guarantees asymptotic convergence of tracking or stabilization errors and boundedness of closed-loop signals. The advantages of the developed controller include the ability to simultaneously achieve tracking and stabilization control of nonholonomic mobile robots and the ability to ensure that the prescribed velocity and torque constraints are not breached by simply tuning the design parameters a priori, even in the presence of uncertain disturbances. Full article

This paper proposes a precise motion control strategy for a three-wheeled mobile robot with two driven rear wheels and one steered front wheel so that an obstacle avoidance motion task is able to be well implemented. Initially, the motion laws under nonholonomic constraints are expounded for the three-wheeled mobile robot in order to facilitate the derivation of its dynamic model. Subsequently, a prescribed target curve is converted into a speed target through the nonholonomic constraint of zero lateral speed. A modified dynamical tracking target that is aligned with the dynamic model is then developed based on the relative curvature of the prescribed curve. By applying this dynamical tracking target, path tracking precision is enhanced through appropriate selection of a yaw motion speed target, thus preventing speed errors from accumulating during relative curvature tracking. On this basis, integral sliding mode control and feedback linearization methods are adopted for designing robust controllers, enabling the accurate movement of the three-wheeled mobile robot along a given path. A theoretical analysis and simulation results corroborate the effectiveness of the proposed trajectory tracking control strategy in preventing off-target deviations, even with significant speed errors. Full article

This paper presents a novel robust output feedback control that simultaneously performs both stabilization and trajectory tracking for a class of underactuated nonholonomic systems despite model uncertainties, external disturbance, and the absence of velocity measurement. To solve this challenging problem, a generalized normal form has been successfully created by employing an input–output feedback linearization approach and a change in coordinates (diffeomorphism). This research mainly focuses on the stabilization problem of nonholonomic systems that can be transformed to a normal form and pose several challenges, including (i) a nontriangular normal form, (ii) the internal dynamics of the system are non-affine in control, and (iii) the zero dynamics of the system are not in minimum phase. The proposed scheme utilizes combined backstepping and sliding mode control (SMC) techniques. Furthermore, the full-order high gain observer (HGO) has been developed to estimate the derivative of output functions and internal dynamics. Then, full-order HGO and the backstepping SMC have been integrated to synthesize a robust output feedback controller. A differential-drive type (2,0) the wheeled mobile robot has been considered as an example to support the theoretical results. The simulation results demonstrate that the backstepping SMC exhibits robustness against bounded uncertainties. Full article

In this article, the research team systematically developed a method to model the kinematics and dynamics of a 3-wheeled robot subjected to external disturbances and sideways wheel sliding. These models will be used to design control laws that compensate for wheel slippage, model uncertainties, and external disturbances. These control algorithms were developed based on dynamic surface control (DSC). An adaptive trajectory tracking DSC algorithm using a fuzzy logic system (AFDSC) and a radial neural network (RBFNN) with a fuzzy logic system were used to overcome the disadvantages of DSC and expand the application domain for non-holonomic wheeled mobile robots with lateral slip (WMR). However, this adaptive fuzzy neural network dynamic surface control (AFNNDSC) adaptive controller ensures the closed system is stable, follows the preset trajectory in the presence of wheel slippage model uncertainty, and is affected by significant amplitude disturbances. The stability and convergence of the closed-loop system are guaranteed based on the Lyapunov analysis. The AFNNDSC adaptive controller is evaluated by simulation on the Matlab/simulink software R2022b and in a steady state. The maximum position error on the right wheel and left wheel is 0.000572 (m) and 0.000523 (m), and the angular velocity tracking error in the right and left wheels of the control method is 0.000394 (rad/s). The experimental results show the theoretical analysis’ correctness, the proposed controller’s effectiveness, and the possibility of practical applications. Orbits are set as two periodic functions of period T as follows. Full article

An end-to-end approach to autonomous navigation that is based on deep reinforcement learning (DRL) with a survival penalty function is proposed in this paper. Two actor–critic (AC) frameworks, namely, deep deterministic policy gradient (DDPG) and twin-delayed DDPG (TD3), are employed to enable a nonholonomic wheeled mobile robot (WMR) to perform navigation in dynamic environments containing obstacles and for which no maps are available. A comprehensive reward based on the survival penalty function is introduced; this approach effectively solves the sparse reward problem and enables the WMR to move toward its target. Consecutive episodes are connected to increase the cumulative penalty for scenarios involving obstacles; this method prevents training failure and enables the WMR to plan a collision-free path. Simulations are conducted for four scenarios—movement in an obstacle-free space, in a parking lot, at an intersection without and with a central obstacle, and in a multiple obstacle space—to demonstrate the efficiency and operational safety of our method. For the same navigation environment, compared with the DDPG algorithm, the TD3 algorithm exhibits faster numerical convergence and higher stability in the training phase, as well as a higher task execution success rate in the evaluation phase. Full article

Mechanical systems that consist of a four-wheeled or two-wheeled robot with Mecanum wheels and a two-wheeled trailer with conventional wheels are considered. The kinematic characteristics of the mechanical systems under consideration of holonomic and non-holonomic constraints are presented and compared. From this, it is shown that the structure of the kinematic constraint equations for mobile systems with a trailer does not apply to Chaplygin’s dynamic equations. If the mechanical system is not Chaplygin’s system, then the dynamic equations cannot be integrated separately from the equations of kinematic constraints. This is the difference between the kinematic constraint equations for the robot-trailer system and the constraint equations for a single robot with Mecanum wheels. Examples of numerical calculations using the equations of kinematic constraints are given. Full article

Nonholonomic four-wheeled mobile robot (NFMR) is a typical multiple input–multiple output system that formulates its kinematic dynamics concerning position and attitude in a parallel manner. However, due to the lumped disturbances and interconnected states, demand-satisfied performance is difficult to obtain for existing coupled control solutions. To address this problem, a double-loop sliding-mode control (DLSMC) mechanism is proposed for achieving position/attitude cascade regulation. For the outer position tracking loop in the proposed scheme, a sliding mode control method of the bounded time-varying integral nonsingular terminal is designed to guarantee fast tracking in the presence of large initial errors and input saturation. On the other hand, for the inner attitude control loop, a novel adaptive barrier function-based sliding-mode control method is proposed without control gain overestimation. This enables the attitude to follow within a predefined vicinity of the sliding mode surface and holds it subsequently independent of the lumped uncertainties. Theoretical analysis is conducted to demonstrate the asymptotic stability. Comparative experiments implemented on a homemade NFMR show enhanced trajectory tracking performance and system robustness using position/attitude cascade regulation via the proposed DLSMC mechanism. Full article