Optimal Control Design Results for Multiple Wheeled Mobile Robots

Abstract This research presents the optimal control design results for the nonlinear trajectory tracking of multiple wheeled mobile robots (WMRs). The purpose of this design is to propose an optimal control method for the nonlinear trajectory tracking problem of multiple WMRs. The key contribution of this research is a simplified control structure that enables effective trajectory tracking for multiple WMRs. Generally, solving the nonlinear trajectory tracking problem for multiple WMRs is highly challenging. However, through a series of mathematical operations on the trajectory tracking error dynamics between the controlled WMRs and the desired trajectories, this trajectory tracking problem can be transformed into solving a nonlinear time-varying equation. Furthermore, the solution to this nonlinear time-varying equation can be derived in a simple form. Finally, to verify the performance of the proposed method, a testing scenario with an S-type reference trajectory is applied for performance evaluation.