An Adaptive Trajectory Tracking Control of

Wheeled Mobile Robots

Jianhua Wang Zhanggang Lu Weihai Chen Xingming Wu
School of Automation Science and Electrical Engineering
Beijing University of Aeronautics & Astronautics
Beijing 100191, China
lvzhanggang@gmail.com whchenbuaa@126.com

Abstract—An adaptive trajectory tracking method based on the
kinematics model is proposed in this paper to solve the non-
holonomic restriction problem of trajectory tracking of the
wheeled mobile robot. After analyzing the course statement of the
trajectory tracking control, the idea of the artificial field is
introduced to improve the effect of the trajectory tracking, which
takes the posture error of the robot into account to navigate the
mobile robot. With the analysis of the controller’s uniformly
asymptotically stability and the simulations in MATLAB, the
controller is proven to be practical and effective.
Keywords-wheeled mobile robot; trajectory-tracking; artificial
tracking method is to simultaneously achieve these two goals.
This paper attempts to found an adaptive trajectory tracking
method based on the kinematics model [6-9]. By introducing
artificial potential field method [10], a new controller, which is
approved to be global stable, is proposed here to make the
tracking path more smooth and convergent quickly.
II. THE KINEMATIC MODEL AND PROBLEM
STATEMENT
Just as the Figure 1 shows, the point C is the center of the
field; non-holonomic system; global stability WMR, it’s coordinates is  x , y  , and the robot’s direction angle
is T , then we can use p  x, y, T  to describe the WMR’s
I. INTRODUCTION motion attitude. Point R stands for the reference robot, its
coordinate is ( xr , yr ) , and direction angle is T r . The robot’s
Thanks to the Wheeled Mobile Robot’s numerous merits,
such as high-speed, high energy efficiency, relatively simple movement can be expressed by its linear velocity v and angular
mechanical structure and control system, and profit from the velocity w , Let q (v, w)T , and then the kinematics equations
accumulate technology and experience in the automotive can be expressed as
industry, the Wheeled Mobile Robots System (WMRs) has
won broad attention in industry, which also promote the ªxº
development of the automotive industry. As time goes by, the «x» ª cos T 0 º
development of unmanned vehicles has become possible, and x «x» « sin T 0 » ª v º
p « y» « » « w» Jxp (1)
many experts and scholars are attracted to devote their efforts
to the research of the driverless vehicles. Above all the «x» «¬ 0 1 »¼ ¬ ¼
«T »
problems which need to be solved in the research, how to ¬ ¼
control the vehicle to move along a trajectory we designed for
it is very important to the driverless vehicle, and the WMR’s And the error vector can be expressed as
trajectory-tracking control can help to solve the problem.
The motion control of autonomous mobile robots is the ª xe º ª cos T sin T 0 º ª xr  x º
pe «y » «  sin T cos T 0 » « y  y » Re  pr  p  (2)
most important part in the mobile robot’s research, which can « e» « »« r »
only be resolved through the control theory. Due to it’s non- «¬T e »¼ «¬ 0 0 1 »¼ «¬T r  T »¼
holonomic characteristics[1], the WMRs doesn’t conform to
condition of Brockett’s smoothness and stabilization[2], which Whose differential equation is
makes it difficult to achieve the robot position-tracking and
posture-stabilization control. The trajectory tracking of mobile ªxº
robot belongs to the category of non-linear control problem, « xe » ª wye  vc  vr cos T e º
currently; the main control method contains non-linear state x «x» «  wx  v sin T »
pe « ye » « e r e » (3)
feedback control [3], backstepping control [4], the adaptive
«x» «¬ wr  w »¼
control [5] and intelligent control which appears in recent years. «T e »
All the methods above have both advantages and disadvantages, ¬ ¼
yet, none of them can solve the problem perfectly.
The smooth approach and convergent velocity are two Then the trajectory tracking problem is transformed into
significant factors in trajectory tracking problem, a perfect the stabilization problem of the error model, shown as (3), so
This work is supported by National Nature Science Foundation of China
under the research project 61075075 and National 863 Program of China
under the research project 2008AA04Z210.

978-1-4244-8756-1/11/$26.00 2011
c IEEE 1156
we just need to design a controller which could make the error Profits from the gravitational field concept of the artificial
T
vector pe is bounded, and lim ||  xe , ye , T e  || 0 . potential field, imaging that there is a magnetic dipole on the
t of reference robot’s axle (suppose that the magnetic pole N is in
the front of the pole S) , showed in the Figure 2, at the position
with anticipant posture, and the magnetic field will be
vr generated in the coordinate plane. Affected by this magnetic
Y reference posture wr Tr field, the robot, no matter on the left rear or the right rear of the
reference robot, will move along the magnetic field line ,which
starts from pole N to pole S, to the target position in an smooth
yr and fast way. In order to simplify the calculation, we assume
that each magnetic line is a circle tangent to the axis of the
XR reference robot. So if we could figure out the angle between the
xe
Te robot’s linear velocity and the magnetic power line E , then it’s
YR v
compound expression f ( E ) could be used as a feedback to the
control system and under this condition the trajectory could be
w
ye

more smooth, and the robot will get to the target point more
T quickly.
y
current posture As demonstrated in Figure 3, the magnetic line between
position C and R is CSR and it’s direction is marked with the
arrow. On the position C, the angle between the magnetic line
O x xr X and line CR is the chord-tangent angle w , and the angle
between the direction of the robot and the axis x is T c . So the
relationship between direction angle E and the angle of
Figure 1. Schematic diagram of trajectory tracking navigating T e are presented as follows:

­ Te  2 u w E
III. METHOD OF ARTIFICIAL FIELD ® (4)
T
¯ e w arctg ( ye / xe )

Artificial field method, first proposed by Khatbi, is an
effective approach for path planning; it uses gravitational field Therefore,
and repulsive field to describe the environment. It profits from
a physical concept, that the robot is affected by the repulsive ­ 2arctg ( ye / xe )  T e , xe z 0
E ® (5)
force from the obstacles around it and the gravitational force ¯2S  T e , xe 0
from the target. All the forces from the environment drive the
robot to move along a feasible path from the start point to the
target point. Although this method is usually used in the path-
planning problem, it can also help in solving the trajectory
tracking problem. Y w Te
y R
TR

xe S ye
Y
N x
w
S E
Tc
reference posture C
O X
Figure 3. Caculation of the steering angle in the artificial field

IV. CONTROL SCHEME AND ITS STABILITY

current posture
O X
Figure 2. The artificial static field
ANALYSIS
The structure of the trajectory tracking system is shown in
Figure 4. The global input of the system is the reference
posture pr  xc , yc , T ) , the robot’s current position pc and
the reference velocity qr (vr , wr )T , the global output is the
robot’s current posture pc . The controller takes the posture

2011 6th IEEE Conference on Industrial Electronics and Applications 1157

 error pe and the reference velocity qr into account to system’s equilibrium state through figuring out the equation
T f ( pe ) 0 .
calculate the velocity of the robot q v  p , q  , w  p , q 
e e e e
after that, the robot will take the order to move as the order
input, and the real current position pc will be acquired as long
as the real velocity qc , which is usually different from the ideal
value q and here q and qc are took as equality temporarily to
simplify the forthcoming analysis, is transformed from the
Jacobin matrix and an integral operation, then the position
pc (t ) will be taken as a feedback to the system. The operation
above will be repeated till the position error pe converges to
zero. It is easily known that the calculation part
T Construct a Lyapunov function
,
Based on the Lyapunov stability theory, we can easily
know that this equilibrium point satisfy the necessary
conditions of global asymptotic stability. So all we need to do
is just to prove that this system is uniformly asymptotically
stable.
Theorem 1: If the Lyapunov-candidate-function V is
globally positive definite, radially unbounded and the time
derivative of the Lyapunov-candidate-function is globally
negative definite, and then the equilibrium is proven to
be globally asymptotically stable.
q v  p , q  , w  p , q 
e e e e is the core of the system.
1 2 1 2 2 T
V x e  ye  (1  cos( e )) (8)
2 2 k3 2
qr (t )
Where,
pr (t ) pe ª v( pe , qe ) º q qc pc (t ) xe xe  k1 sin(arctan( w)) ye
« w( p , q ) » J &³
¬ e e ¼
Clear ,
V t 0 ,and only if xe 0, ye 0, T e 0 , then V 0
pc (t )
Then
x
x x 1 T x
V x e x e  ye ye  sin( e ) T e
Figure 4. Architecture of tracking control k3 2
And
The control rule in this paper is designed as follows: x x 1 x x

­v vr cos T e  k1 sin(arctan( w))wxe  k1vr sin(arctan( w)) sin T e x e xe  k1 cos(arctan( w)) w ye  k1 sin(arctan( w)) ye
1  w2
°
°k1 cos(arctan( w)) 1 w ye  k2 ( xe  k1 sin(arctan( w)) ye )
.
So
® 1 w 2 (6) x x x T x
1
° V x e x e  ye ye  sin( e ) T e
1 1 1 k3 2
° w wr  2k3 ye vr cos( T e )  k4 sin( T e )  k5 sin( T e ) sin 2 E
¯ 2 2 2 x 1 x x
x e ( xe  k1 cos(arctan( w)) w ye  k1 sin(arctan( w)) ye )
Where k1 , k2 , k3 , k4 , k5 are all nonnegative. 1  w2
In order to study whether the system is uniformly 1 T 1 1 1
 sin( e )(2k3 ye vr cos( T e )  k4 sin( T e )  k5 sin( T e ) sin 2 E )
asymptotically stable, the trajectory tracking error function (2) k3 2 2 2 2
is updated with the control rule (6), and the state-space  ye ( A1 xe  vr sin T e )
equation of the system can be described as: 2 k4 1
 k2 x e  k1 sin(arctan( w)) wye 2  sin 2 ( T e )
ª º k3 2
« A1 ye  A2 wxe  vr A2 sin T e  A3 ye  k2 ( xe  A2 ye ) »
x « » (7) k5 1
pe  A1 xe  vr sin T e  sin 2 ( T e ) sin 2 E d 0
« » k3 2
« 1 1 1 »
2
« 2k3 ye vr cos( T e )  k4 sin( T e )  k5 sin( T e ) sin E » What’s more, it is easily known that when
¬ 2 2 2 ¼
( pe ) xe 2  ye 2  T e 2 o f , V ( pe ) o f , so this
Where,
Lyapunov function (8) is radically unbounded. Above all, this
1 1 1 function satisfies all the conditions for the theorem 1, so it is
A1 ( wr  2k3 ye vr cos( T e )  k4 sin( T e )  k5 sin( T e )sin 2 E )
2 2 2 known that this control rule is globally uniformly
A2 k1 sin(arctan( w)) asymptotically stable and lim ( xe (t ), ye (t ), T e (t ))T 0.
t of
1 x
A3 k1 cos(arctan( w)) w V. SIMULATION AND ANALYSIS
1  w2
Equation (7) is a nonlinear system and we can know that, In this section, some simulations are carried out in
MATLAB, using the control rule proposed above, and in order
1 to verify the effect of the control rule, the same trajectory
thanks to the use of T e instead of T e , only pe 0 is this
2

1158 2011 6th IEEE Conference on Industrial Electronics and Applications

tracking simulations are presented using the controller 6
proposed in Literature [7], which is as follows: actual trajectory
5 reference trajectory
­° v vr cos T e  k x xe
® (9) 4
°̄ w wr  vr (k y ye  kT sin T e )
The test consists of a line tracking and an spiral tracking. 3
The parameters of line tracking test is as follows: the reference

y/m
2
robot start form point (1, 0) by the speed of vr 0.2(m / s ) ,
1
and go along a line whose inclination is S / 3 , and the initial
posture of the robot is (1.2, 2,90$ ) . The parameters of spiral 0

tracking is that the reference robot, starting from initial posture -1

(1, 0,90$ ) , goes along a spiral whose radius constantly -2
1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4
decreases, it’s initial speed is vr 0.4(m / s ) and angular x/m
velocity is wr 0.4(radius / s ) . The initial posture of the robot Figure 7. Trajectory of line tracking-method of this paper
$
is (1.2, 0.8,135 ) .
In the two simulations, the same parameters 2
k1 , k2 , k3 , k4 , k5 ( which is no need for the control rule in xe
Literature [4] ) is taken to make the simulations more 1.5 ye
convincing. Te

xe/m, ye/m, Te/rad

In all the following figures, the red line represents the 1
reference robot’s trajectory while the dotted line represents the
controlled robot’s. The final effects of the trajectory tracking 0.5
are shown as follows:
6 0
actual trajectory
5 reference trajectory
-0.5
4
-1
3 0 2 4 6 8 10 12
t/s
y/m

2
Figure 8. Trajectory errors of straight line tracking by proposed method
1
Figure 5 and Figure 6 show the trajectory and the errors of
0 line trajectory in literature [7], while Figure 7 and Figure 8
show the method of this paper’s. It can be concluded that, using
-1 the method in this paper, the robot can converge to the
reference line in a very fast and smooth way. It is very clear
-2
1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 when we come to the errors of the trajectory, it takes the
x/m method in literature [7] 4s to make the error converge to zero,
Figure 5. Trajectory of line tracking-method of literature [7] yet it only costs 3s for the method in this paper to achieve that.
2 The line-tracking is the easiest one for the trajectory
xe
tracking problem. In order to prove that this method also fits to
1.5 ye a more complex condition, the spiral tracking simulations are
Te carried out. The follow pictures, Figure 9 and Figure 10 shows
xe/m, ye/m, Te/rad

1 the trajectory and the errors of spiral trajectory in literature [7],

while Figure 11 and Figure 12 stand for the method of this
paper. This time the results become clearer that just take a look
0.5
at trajectory pictures of the two methods, we can know that the
method in this paper is more effective. Because the errors of
0 the method in literature [7] is very large while the error remains
small using the method in this paper, and after it converge to
-0.5 zero, the error won’t become larger like the method in literature
[7].
-1
0 2 4 6 8 10 12
t/s
Figure 6. Errors of trajectory for line tracking-method of literature[7]

2011 6th IEEE Conference on Industrial Electronics and Applications 1159

 2.5 All the results above show that, thanks to the introduction
actual trajectory of artificial potential field method, the control rule proposed in
2 reference trajectory this paper can reduce the trajectory tracking error in a fast and
smooth way, compared to the controller in Literature [7]. The
1.5 proposed method is simple and feasible, so it can be easily used.
y/m

1
VI. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORKS
0.5 An adaptive trajectory tracking method based on the
kinematics model is proposed in this paper to solve the non-
0 holonomic restriction problem of trajectory tracking of the
wheeled mobile robot. In this paper, attentions are paid to the
-0.5
-3 -2 -1 0 1 2 introduction of the artificial field. We introduce the artificial
x/m field method to navigate the mobile robot, and the trajectory
Figure 9. Trajectory of spiral tracking-mehod of literature[7] turns to be smooth and fast out of the contribution of artificial
0.6 field method. The final simulation indicates that the method
xe makes good performance and could be taken into practice.
0.4 This paper is just a part of the car-tracking problem, in this
ye
paper we achieved the method which is needed to control the
xe/m, ye/m, Te/rad

0.2
Te mobile robot to reach the target point pr  xc , yc , T ) , the
0
position of the leader at time tn  m , and the next step will be the
-0.2 implementation of the real experiment.
-0.4 REFERENCE
-0.6 [1] Bloch A.M. , Reyhanoglu M. “Controllability and Stabilizability
properties of a Nonholonomic Control System[C]”. Proceedings of the
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0 20 40 60 80 100 1990 1312-1314.
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Figure 10. Errors of trajecotry for spiral tracking-method of literature [7] control system[J]”. IEEE Control system magazine, 1995, 15(6): 20-36
2.5 [3] Samson C. “Path Following and Time-Varying Feedback Stabilization
actual trajectory of Wheeled Mobile Robot[C]”. Proceedings of the International
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[5] Mnif F, Touati F. “An Adaptive Control Scheme for Non holonomic
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x/m [7] WANG Chuan, WU Huaiyu,WANG Fen, CHEN Lei,”Trajectory
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Figure 11. Trajectory of spiral tracking-mehod of this paper Electronics Technique, 2008, 24: 113-119
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[9] Stefan K. and Fridtjof J., “A Trajectory-based Approach for the Lateral
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Control of Vehicle Following System”. Proceedings of the IEEE

-0.2 International Conference on Intelligent Vehicles, 1998, pp. 156–161.
[10] Vadakkepat P, Tan K C, Wang Ming-Liang. “Evolutionary Artificial
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Figure 12. Errors of trajecotry for spiral tracking-method of this paper

1160 2011 6th IEEE Conference on Industrial Electronics and Applications