Planar target following control scheme based on path generation for nonholonomic terrestrial robots

This paper addresses the problem of controlling the posture of a dual wheeled mobile terrestrial robot, with movement constraints with the objective of detect and follow a planar moving target, using a single fixed vision sensor. The main challenge addressed is to keep the robot oriented in the same direction as the target. In order to accomplish it, a computationally simple control algorithm is proposed in order to generate maneuvers to reduce the orientation error between the robot and the target in the long run. The main contribution of the algorithm is to combine path generation and path following strategies that are suited to the constraints of the robot, and that can be switched according to the situation of the robot at each moment in order to keep the visibility of the target.