Time-varying feedback stabilization of nonholonomic car-like mobile robots

Abstract

Many nonholonomic mechanical systems, such as car-like mobile robots, are controllable but cannot be stabilized to given positions and orientations by using smooth pure-state feedback control. However, as shown in [18], such systems may still be stabilized by using smooth time-varying feedbacks, i.e. feedbacks which explicitly depend on the time-variable. This possibility is here applied to the stabilization of a class of nonlinear systems whose equations encompass simple car models. A set of stabilizing smooth time-varying feedbacks is derived and simulation results are given.