Invariant manifold-based stabilizing controllers for nonholonomic mobile robots

The problem of designing a stabilizing controller for point-to-point control of a four-wheeled mobile robot is considered in this study. The stability of the proposed control system is analyzed using Lyapunov theory. Firstly, a four-wheeled mobile robot which is an under-actuated system with two inputs is considered as a controlled object. Then, the switching and non-switching control methods based on an invariant manifold theory are proposed for stabilizing it in the desired position and orientation, where a chained form model is assumed to be used as a canonical model. Finally, simulation results are given to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.