Smith-predictor compensator for a delayed omnidirectional mobile robot

This paper deals with the discrete time control of an omnidirectional mobile robot subject to transport delays. A discrete-time model of the vehicle is obtained by considering an exact discretization of the continuous time model of the robot where the time delay induced by a communication network is considered. The path-tracking problem is addressed by means of a prediction strategy based on the well known Smith predictor compensator. The nonlinear nature of the omnidirectional mobile robot induces an approximate estimate of the future values of the systems that are used together with a feedback linearization approach to solve the tracking problem.