Nonlinear Guidance Laws for Trajectory Tracking over a Mobile Communication Network applied to Unmanned Ground Vehicles

摘要

The purpose of this paper is to present a methodology (theory with experimental verification) for control of a wheeled rover vehicle using a cyber-physical system architecture, nonlinear control, and a novel optimal trajectory design. An optimal trajectory with an acceleration limit is used to generate a reference for the rover to follow. A nonlinear backstepping-like guidance law is derived to generate speed and steering commands to drive the vehicle along the desired trajectory. The efficacy of the overall approach is demonstrated using several experimental runs using a wheeled rover augmented with GPS, compass, wheel encoders.