A smoothness-preserving waypoints follower for mobile platforms

This paper presents a new formulation to the waypoints following control of mobile robotic platforms, which directly uses the original waypoints sequence, typically obtained from discrete path planning, in order to achieve proper motion behaviors with regards to speed transitions, overall motion duration and path smoothness. The approach produces realtime smooth effective paths while ensuring waypoints traversal with a specified accuracy. Various experiments, realized both in simulation and on real robotic platforms had shown the effectiveness of the approach.