Stabilization of nonholonomic mobile robots by a GA-based fuzzy sliding mode control

In this study, fuzzy logic control principle and sliding mode control theory are combined to stabilize a mobile robot under nonholonomic kinematic constraints. In order to improve the tracking performance, the scaling factors of FLC are searched by genetic algorithms (GAs). The simulation results show that all three control approaches, SMC (sliding mode control), FSMC (fuzzy-SMC) and GA-FSMC (GA-based FSMC) can stabilize the mobile robot to the origin with /spl phi/=0. However the GA-FSMC provides a systematic way to search the scaling factors, and thus improves the transient performance of the system response and reduces the path length for navigation.