Steering control algorithm for a class of wheeled mobile robots

The authors present a simple steering control algorithm for a class of non-holonomic wheeled mobile robots. Five different types of wheeled mobile robots are considered. The feedback controls are piece-wise constant, states dependent and the method is based on the construction of a cost function V, which is sum of two semi-positive definite functions V₁ and V₂. The first m state variables can be steered along the given vector fields directly using the classical controls and remaining n-m state variables can be steered along the missing Lie brackets indirectly. The task of the control strategy is to decay the non-differentiable cost function along the controlled system trajectories only asymptotically. The beauty of the algorithm is that it does not require the conversion of the system models into ´chained form´ and does not rely on any special transformation techniques.