Steering behaviour and control of fast wheeled robots

This paper is devoted to mechanical and control analysis of steering systems of fast wheeled robots. Steering performances are analysed by means of a formulation of a path-tracking control problem. The mechanical model takes into account the wheel-sliding and wheel-elasticity which are relevant to the steering behaviour. When the path is a straight line or a circular arc, the tracking offsets are small and the assigned velocity is constant, the proposed tracking scheme leads to a controller using direct state feedback and linear quadratic regulation approach. Four different steering ways are examined, they combine steer and drive actions on a four wheeled robots