Re-injecting the Structure in NMPC Schemes Application to the Constrained Stabilization of a Snakeboard

In this paper, a constrained nonlinear predictive control scheme is proposed for a class of under-actuated nonholonomic systems. The scheme is based on fast generation of steering trajectories that inherently fulfill the contraints while showing a “

translatability

” property which is generally needed to derive stability results in receding-horizon schemes. The corresponding open-loop optimization problem can be solved very efficiently making possible a real-time implementation on fast systems (The resulting optimization problem is roughly scalar). The whole framework is shown to hold for the well known challenging problem of a snakeboard constrained stabilization. Illustrative simulations are proposed to assess the efficiency of the proposed solution under saturation constraints and model uncertainties.