A state augmented adaptive backstepping control of wheeled mobile robots

The present paper aims to design an integrated kinematic/dynamic-based tracking controller for wheeled mobile robots (WMRs) considering motors’ dynamics. By defining a reference WMR, the role of kinematic controller is to not only minimize the posture error which indicates the difference between the reference and actual WMRs, but also to generate a desired path for the actual WMR. The kinematic tracking control problem of WMRs is so challenging if motors’ dynamics, parametric and nonparametric uncertainties and external disturbances are considered. Thus, proposing a dynamic control law alongside a kinematic control is unavoidable. In this study, we propose a new dynamic controller, namely, a state augmented adaptive backstepping such that the desired path is asymptotically tracked. Several numerical results accompanied by 3D simulations of trajectory tracking control of a WMR in ‘Simscape Multibody’ environment and comparisons with two well-designed controllers in the literature are reported to show the high performance of proposed control structure.