Adaptive docking using range measurements

This paper presents an adaptive scheme for localization of a target from distance measurements and motion control of a mobile agent to pursue this target. First, a robust adaptive law is designed to generate location estimate of the target using distance measurements. Then, following the standard certainty equivalence approach, a motion control law is developed considering substitution of the estimate generated by the localization algorithm for the unknown location of the target. Noting that there is some incompatibility between the persistence of excitation requirements of the localization algorithm and the target pursuit goal of the motion control law, the base motion control law is designed to eliminate the effects of this incompatibility. Stability and convergence analysis for the overall adaptive control scheme is presented. The results are valid in both two and three dimensions of motion space.