Constrained Trajectory Tracking Control of a Mobile Robot by Limited Integrator Anti-Windup

This brief considers the mobile robot trajectory tracking control problem with actuator saturation. Although problem has been considered in the literature, most approaches achieve stability at the expense of smooth limited functions on the controller terms, which may reduce the performance. The limited integrator anti-windup (LIAW) approach is a known solution to improve stability and performance in presence of actuator saturation. In general, to the best of the author’s knowledge, this approach has not been analyzed with Lyapunov’s theory and known applications seem to rely on intuition rather than on a formal study. In this brief, a proportional (P) plus LIAW scheme is proposed as solution to the constrained trajectory tracking control of mobile robots. For the first time, in this brief, a Lyapunov stability analysis is provided for the P+PIAW approach when applied to trajectory tracking control of a mobile robot. A numerical simulation comparison among a known scheme based on smooth saturation functions, the classical linear proportional-integral controller, and the proposed P+LIAM scheme is provided. Better results are obtained for the proposed solution since the windup problem is avoided, which is very useful in practical applications.