Trajectory tracking control for an AutoNOMO vehicle using a decoupling approach

The paper deals with the tracking problem of an AutoNOMO vehicle. The problem statement is similar to the tracking control of a nonholonomic car-like robot. To this aim, the kinematic model of the vehicle is considered. Thus, a local transformation takes the system into a chained-form. Later, the error tracking dynamics is transformed into a triangular-like form. In this way, the system may be divided into two interconnected sub-systems. A homogeneous finite-time controller is proposed to stabilize the Cartesian coordinate x. In consequence, the effects x are decoupled from the remained dynamics. Then, a recursive backstepping-like methodology stabilizes the remaining coordinates. The stability of the closed-loop system is analyzed using the Lyapunov theory. Simulations and experiments illustrate the feasibility of the approach.