A strategy of path following control for wheeled mobile robots

The path following control for a kind of nonholonomic single body wheeled mobile robot (WMR) and the trailer system consisting of a tractor and two trailers was investigated. Based on kinematics and error model, a control strategy using Lyapunov method was proposed for two-wheeled mobile robot and extended to the case of tractor-trailer robot. For the trailer system, we controlled the first trailer instead of the tractor and the last trailer to follow a reference path in order to lessen the width of the road covered by the robot. The experiment results show the convergence speed is rapid and the algorithm is simple and efficient. Finally, a set of simulations was presented to compare three control laws, which were performed on the tractor and the different trailers respectively.