Time-Delay Estimation and State Prediction of a Differential Mobile Robot

The present work focuses on two main aspects: the estimation of an unknown time-varying input time-delay and the use of this estimation on the design of a state predictor for a differential drive mobile robot. It is shown how, previously reported work for the estimation of constant time delay, can be extended for the case of time-varying delays. Based on the time-delay estimation, it is proposed a predictor-observer strategy to obtain the future values of the system. The convergence of the prediction errors is shown by means of standard stability results on time delay systems. To show the potentiality of the time delay estimation and the state prediction results, the future state is used to solve a trajectory tracking problem.