Adaptive sliding mode trajectory tracking control for wheeled mobile robots

This paper discusses the problem of adaptive sliding mode trajectory tracking control for wheeled mobile robots in the presence of external disturbances and inertia uncertainties. A new fast nonsingular terminal sliding mode surface without any constraint is proposed, which not only avoids singularity, but also retains the advantages of sliding mode control. In order to implement the trajectory tracking mission, the error dynamic system is divided into a second-order subsystem and a third-order one. First, an adaptive fast nonsingular terminal sliding mode control law of the angular velocity is constructed for stabilising the second-order subsystem in finite time. Then, another adaptive fast nonsingular terminal sliding mode control law of the linear velocity is designed to guarantee the stability of the third-order subsystem. Finally, a simulation example is provided to demonstrate the validity of the proposed control scheme.