Unified approach to trajectory tracking and set-point control for a front-axle driven car-like mobile robot

The paper presents a unified control framework for trajectory tracking and set-point motion tasks for a front axle driven car-like robot. The concept relies on two crucial elements. The first one follows from reformulation of the vehicle kinematics into the form of the unicycle model for the vehicle body augmented with the front-wheel steering dynamics. The second one relies on application of the original Vector-Field Orientation control strategy to the obtained unicycle subsystem. Physical inputs of the car-like vehicle are reconstructed from the inputs of the unicycle using the inverse procedure to the model reformulation conducted at the beginning. Performance and robustness of the proposed solution is illustrated by simulations.