Trajectory-Tracking Hybrid Prescribed-Time Control for Wheeled Mobile Robots with Disturbances

This manuscript presents a prescribed-time control for a wheeled mobile robot in trajectory-tracking tasks under the effect of kinematic disturbances, such as skidding and slipping. The control strategy aims to track a desired trajectory in a prescribed time despite any arbitrary initial condition by implementing a hybrid controller encompassed by time-varying state feedback and a twisting controller. The hybrid control structure compensates for the effect of the disturbances and attains trajectory tracking in prescribed time by performing a coordinate transformation, which facilitates its implementation. Furthermore, a comparison with finite-time and feedback controllers is conducted to assess the hybrid controller's performance. To this end, numerical simulations employing Matlab-Simulink were performed, demonstrating the superiority of the novel methodology over current methodologies for trajectory-tracking tasks.