A finite‐time adaptive Taylor series tracking control of electrically‐driven wheeled mobile robots

This research seeks to address a new integrated kinematic/dynamic adaptive Taylor series‐based control design for the robust tracking of electrically‐driven differential drive wheeled mobile robots (WMRs). This control design includes two loops, namely the outer loop (a kinematic control law) and the inner loop (a dynamic controller). Being capable of compensating for far initial conditions from a desired trajectory, a new kinematic control law is designed to make the posture tracking error converge to zero asymptotically as well as to generate a desired trajectory for a dynamic controller. The key role of the dynamic controller is to compensate for lumped uncertainties. To do this, the proposed chattering‐free dynamic controller guarantees that the defined sliding surface which is a function of tracking error and its time derivative will be converged to zero within a finite time. The exact stability analysis of inner closed‐loop system is developed via two Lyapunov‐like positive definite functions to ensure not only the boundedness of all signals but also the finite‐time convergence of sliding surface to zero. The proposed control algorithm is validated by means of various simulations, including comparisons with well‐designed kinematic and integrated kinematic/dynamic control literature.