Trajectory tracking of a differentially driven wheeled mobile robot in the presence of obstacles

Abstract

A trajectory following and obstacle avoidance mechanism for a mobile robot is presented for situations where the robot has to follow a specific target trajectory but the task might not be completely possible due to obstacles in the way, which the robot must avoid. After avoiding an obstacle, the robot should catch up with the target trajectory. In the proposed system, this objective is reached by combining a nonlinear control method with an Artificial Potential Function method, leading to trajectory tracking control with obstacle avoidance capabilities.