A New Nonlinear H-infinity Feedback Control Approach to the Problem of Autonomous Robot Navigation

This research work introduces a new control method for feedback control of nonlinear dynamical systems with application example the problem of trajectory tracking by an autonomous robotic vehicle. The control method consists of a repetitive solution of an H-infinity control problem for the mobile robot, that makes use of a locally linearized model of the robot and takes place at each iteration of the control algorithm. The vehicle’s model is locally linearized round its current position through the computation of the associated Jacobian matrices. Using the linearized model of the vehicle an H-infinity feedback control law is computed. The known robustness features of H-infinity control enable to compensate for the errors of the approximative linearization, as well as to eliminate the effects of external perturbations. The efficiency of the proposed control scheme is shown analytically and is confirmed through simulation experiments. The method can be applied to a wide class of nonlinear dynamical systems.