Tracking control of differential mobile robots using adaptive coupling scheme

In this paper, a new adaptive coupling control algorithm is developed to synchronize motions of two driving wheels of a differential mobile robot so that the robot maintains in the desired trajectory path. Unlike considerable approaches in the literature, in this study motion of driving wheels instead. of the robot configuration are directly controlled in a synchronous manner. This strategy avoids the involvement of nonholonomic constraint in the control design, and therefore simplifies the practical implementation significantly. The proposed controller incorporates the cross-coupling technology into adaptive control architecture, and guarantees asymptotic convergence to zero of both position tracking error and the synchronization error. Experiments have been conducted to verify the effectiveness of the proposed control approach.