Use of a preview control scheme with knowledge of future trajectory information for a lane tracking controller on a wheeled mobile robot

Navigation and control of wheeled mobile robots (WMRpsilas) have been an active area of research and development in recent years. WMRpsilas are increasingly present in a myriad of applications ranging from household vacuum cleaner robots to complex rovers used for planetary exploration. Major achievements made in the field of mobile robotics involve path-planning, generating quasi-optimal trajectories and methods to handle a dynamic environment. If some information on the path to be tracked is available ahead of time, a control algorithm could be formulated to include this extra information. Preview control is a method which utilizes future information on external disturbances (in this case, the curvature of the path) to improve the performance of a tracking system. This paper discusses the use of such a controller in lane tracking for a wheeled mobile robot.