CONTROL OF CHAINED SYSTEMS APPLICATION TO PATH-FOLLOWING AND TIME-VARYING POINT-STABILIZATION OF MOBILE ROBOTS

Chain form systems have recently been introduced to model the kinemati cs of a class of nonholonomic mechanical systems. The first part of th e study is centered on control design and analysis for nonlinear syste ms which can be converted to the chain form. Solutions to various cont rol problems (open-loop steering, partial or complete state feedback s tabilization) are either recalled, generalized, or developed. In parti cular, globally stabilizing time-varying feedbacks are derived, and a discussion of their convergence properties is provided. Application to the control of nonholonomic wheeled mobile robots is described in the second part of the study by considering the case of a car-pulling tra ilers.