Trajectory Tracking Control of Wheeled Mobile Robots Using Backstepping

This paper proposes a trajectory tracking control method for wheeled mobile robots with nonholonomic constraints using the combination of the backstepping and direct Lyapunov method. Firstly, we establish the robot’s kinematic model and analyze the trajectory tracking problem. Then, the Sigmoid function is introduced to the backstepping method to improve the convergence rate and global asymptotic stability of the trajectory tracking controller. In addition, the Barbalat Lemma is employed to prove the asymptotic stability of the controller tracking errors. Finally, the co-simulation using V-REP and MATLAB software are presented to validate the performance of our trajectory tracking controller.