Performance-based reactive navigation for non-holonomic mobile robots

This paper presents an architecture for the navigation of an autonomous mobile robot evolving in environments with obstacles. Instead of addressing motion planning and control in different contexts, these issues are described in connected modules with performance requirement considerations. The planning problem is formulated as a constrained receding horizon planning problem and is solved in real time with an efficient computational method that combines nonlinear control theory, B-spline basis function and nonlinear programming. An integral sliding mode controller is used for trajectory tracking. Closed-loop stability of the tracking errors is guaranteed in spite of unknown disturbances. It is also shown that this strategy is particularly useful if integral sliding mode control is combined with other methods to further robustify against perturbations. The effectiveness, perfect performance of obstacle avoidance, real time and high robustness properties are demonstrated by experimental results.