Experimental tests of a sliding mode controller for trajectory tracking of a car-like mobile robot

This paper deals with the problem of the practical tracking control of an experimental car-like system called the Robucar. The car-like Robucar is a four-wheeled car in a single steering mode. Based on a kinematic model of the car-like Robucar, a practical tracking controller is designed using the second-order sliding mode control of the super twisting algorithm. Hence, the output tracking of the desired trajectory is achieved, and the tracking errors vanish asymptotically. Experimental tests on the car-like Robucar are presented for simple and real-time nonholonomic trajectories, and comparative results with the conventional sliding controller demonstrate the applicability and efficiency of the proposed controller.