A New Nonlinear H-infinity Feedback Control Approach to the Problem of Autonomous Robot Navigation

Abstract

This research work introduces a new controlmethod for feedback control of nonlinear dynamical systemswith application example the problem of trajectory trackingby an autonomous robotic vehicle. The control method consistsof a repetitive solution of an H-infinity control problemfor the mobile robot, that makes use of a locally linearizedmodel of the robot and takes place at each iteration of thecontrol algorithm. The vehicle’s model is locally linearizedround its current position through the computation of theassociated Jacobian matrices. Using the linearized model ofthe vehicle an H-infinity feedback control law is computed.The known robustness features of H-infinity control enable tocompensate for the errors of the approximative linearization,as well as to eliminate the effects of external perturbations.The efficiency of the proposed control scheme is shown analyticallyand is confirmed through simulation experiments.The method can be applied to a wide class of nonlineardynamical systems.