Path tracking and trajectory planning for nonholonomic wheeled mobile robots

In order to track multiform curves planned for nonholonomic wheeled mobile robots stably, this paper presents an effective trajectory planning scheme and an improved tracking controller using a biological incentive model. The trajectory planning scheme, which includes a curvature estimator based on two adjacent points, combines the results of path planning with the policies of tracking.. The kinetic restrictions method based on biological incentive model is introduced in backstepping technique to improve the control stability. It resolves the velocity jump problem existing in some previous tracking controllers and deals with the situations with large tracking errors. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of tracking capability of the proposed scheme.