Trajectory tracking control for underactuated autonomous vehicles via adaptive dynamic programming

In this paper, the trajectory tracking control problem for underactuated autonomous vehicles moving in 2-D space is studied. Firstly, the trajectory tracking error dynamics with the equivalent point being the origin are given. Since both model and input uncertainties of vehicles are considered, a robust control problem is formulated by giving the extended trajectory tracking error dynamics. Through showing that a robust control law is equivalent to an optimal control law for a nominal system under some conditions, the robust control problem is transformed into an equivalent optimal control problem and a cost function composed of uncertainty bounds and discount factor is constructed. In order to solve the optimal control problem, a policy iteration -based ADP algorithm is proposed, in which two neural networks, called critic and actor networks, are applied respectively to describe the unknown value function and control law. The weights of the two networks are tuned through the gradient descent method at each iteration and the optimality and convergence properties are provided in the sequel. At last, simulation results are given to illustrate the validity of the proposed algorithm.