Active force control of an nonholonomic wheeled mobile robot

Abstract

A method to improve the stability and robustness of a nonholonomic wheeled mobile robot (WMR) using an Active Force Control (AFC) method was presented through a simulation and experimental study. The AFC strategy is a robust approach to the control of dynamical systems that involves approximating the estimated inertia matrix of the physical system necessary to compensate internal and external disturbances. The advantage is its ability to compensate disturbances effectively and reliably without heavy mathematical computation. The objective of the study is the implementation of AFC to accomplish a trajectory tracking control of a mobile robot, particularly when the robot operates in parametric changes and varied operating conditions. The proposed AFC schemes were integrated into the conventional (linear and angular velocities) outer loop controller. An intelligent method to estimate the system inertia matrix using fuzzy logic (FL) was also investigated and later implemented in the AFC inner loop (simulation study).