Tracking control of a nonholonomic ground vehicle

The purpose of the presented work is to address the problem of controlling vehicles subject to nonholonomic constraints, specifically unicycle mobile robots, while tracking another dynamical model (reference system) that is less constrained. The closed loop stability of the tracking error dynamics is obtained using Lyapunov theory as well as properly designing the dynamics of the desired distance between the vehicle and the reference system. In particular, the vehicle maintains a time dependent distance to the reference system, which is tracking the desired trajectory. Results from the implementation of both the designed controller and a previously existing tracking controller are presented to verify and compare its performance and capabilities.