Velocity and Position Tracking Controllers for Wheeled Mobile Robots

This paper studies the velocity and position tracking control problems of differential-drive wheeled mobile robots with nonholonomic constraints. We show that these control problems can be solved without using the robot's linear velocity in the feedback loop. The proposed control laws are based on the dynamic feedback linearization technique and render the origin of the closed-loop dynamics globally exponentially stable. The stability analysis is carried out using Lyapunov theory. Finally, to validate the developed theory we present experimental results on a differential-drive wheeled mobile robot.