Robust anti-sliding control of wheeled mobile robots

To cope with the problem of path following control of wheeled mobile robots in the presence of sliding, a robust anti-sliding controller is designed. A kinematic model which takes sliding effects into account as bounded additive disturbances is built up. Based on chained system theories, the kinematic model is transformed into a normal perturbed chained system which makes it quite straightforward to design a variable structure controller. The stability of the proposed controller is proven which yields convergence of lateral control errors and bounded orientation errors. Simulation results showed that the proposed robust controller can moderate negative sliding effects and improve lateral control accuracy in spite of sliding. The results are also very important for safety control of vehicles.