An adaptive sliding mode backstepping control for the mobile manipulator with nonholonomic constraints

Abstract To solve disturbances, nonlinearity, nonholonomic constraints and dynamic coupling between the platform and its mounted robot manipulator, an adaptive sliding mode controller based on the backstepping method applied to the robust trajectory tracking of the wheeled mobile manipulator is described in this article. The control algorithm rests on adopting the backstepping method to improve the global ultimate asymptotic stability and applying the sliding mode control to obtain high response and invariability to uncertainties. According to the Lyapunov stability criterion, the wheeled mobile manipulator is divided into several stabilizing subsystems, and an adaptive law is designed to estimate the general nondeterminacy, which make the controller be capable to drive the trajectory tracking error of the mobile manipulator to converge to zero even in the presence of perturbations and mathematical model errors. We compare our controller with the robust neural network based algorithm in nonholonomic constraints and uncertainties, and simulation results prove the effectivity and feasibility of the proposed method in the trajectory tracking of the wheeled mobile manipulator.