Navigation of nonholonomic vehicles in complex environments with potential fields and tracking

We treat the problem of navigation of a wheeled nonholonomic vehicle in a cluttered environment by: (i) finding, at every instant, a new collision free reference position using potential fields, and (ii) tracking this using nonholonomic tracking. Thus, our feedback solution can be applied in real time and guarantees both convergence to a final position and collision avoidance. The issue of final orientation accommodation is resolved for a number of practical configurations by using a fictitious obstacle around the goal state