Passivity-based switching control for stabilization of wheeled mobile robots

Abstract

We propose a novel switching control law for theposture stabilization of a wheeled mobile robot, that utilizes the(energetic) passivity of the system's open-loop dynamics with nonnegligibleinertial effects. The proposed passivity-based switchingcontrol law ensures that the robot's (x, y)-position enters into anarbitrarily small (as specified by user-designed error-bound) levelset of a certain navigation potential function defined on the (x, y)-plane, and that its orientation converges to a target angle. Underthis passivity-based switching control, the robot moves back andforth between two submanifolds in such a way that the navigationpotential is strictly decreasing during this inter-switching move.Once the system's (x, y)-trajectory enters such a desired levelset, at most one more switching occurs to correct orientation.Simulation is performed to validate/highlight properties of thepresented control law.