High Speed Differential Drive Mobile Robot Path Following Control With Bounded Wheel Speed Commands

The great majority of path following control laws for either kinematical or dynamical mobile robot models are designed assuming ideal actuators, i.e. assuming that any commanded velocity or torque (in the kinematical and dynamical cases respectively) will be instantly implemented regardless of its value. Real actuators are far from being ideal. In particular, only bounded velocities and torques can be realized for any given command. With reference to the kinematical model of a differential drive mobile robot, a known path following control law is modified to account for actuator velocity saturation. The proposed solution is experimentally shown to be particularly useful for high speed applications where accounting for actuator velocity saturation may have a large influence on performance.