Tracking control of WMRs on loose soil based on mixed H2/H∞ control with longitudinal slip ratio estimation

Wheeled mobile robots (WMRs) often suffer from the longitudinal slipping when moving on the loose soil of the surface of the moon during exploration. Longitudinal slip is the main cause of WMRs' delay in trajectory tracking. In this paper, a nonlinear extended state observer (NESO) is introduced to estimate the longitudinal velocity in order to estimate the slip ratio and the derivative of the loss of velocity which are used in modelled disturbance compensation. Owing to the uncertainty and disturbance caused by estimation errors, a multi-objective controller using the mixed H2/H∞ method is employed to ensure the robust stability and performance of the WMR system. The final inputs of the trajectory tracking consist of the feedforward compensation, compensation for the modelled disturbances and designed multi-objective control inputs. Finally, the simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the controller, which exhibits a satisfactory tracking performance. •A nonlinear extended state observer (NESO) is used to estimate the slip ratio.•The NESO is also used to compute the compensation items.•A mixed H2/H∞ controller combined with compensation based on NESO is proposed.