A virtual reference trajectory scheme for tracking control of wheeled mobile robots with slip disturbances

The problem of trajectory tracking control for wheeled mobile robots with slip disturbances is investigated in this paper. A virtual reference trajectory scheme is proposed based on disturbance compensations. Different from the conventional design philosophy of adding disturbance compensations to the controller, the proposed scheme integrates slip disturbance estimates into the reference trajectory. The proposed scheme consists of two parts. First, the slip disturbance estimates and the reference trajectory are fused to generate a virtual reference trajectory, where the slip disturbances are estimated using a disturbance approximation method. Second, a controller is designed to enable the wheeled mobile robot’s odometry position and yaw angle track the virtual reference trajectory, and then the actual position of the wheeled mobile robot track the position of the real reference trajectory. Comparison simulations and experiments are provided to illustrate the validity and advantages of the proposed scheme.