Path Following for an Omnidirectional Mobile Robot Based on Model Predictive Control

In this paper, the path following problem of an omnidirectional mobile robot has been studied. Given the error dynamic model derived from the robot state vector and the path state vector, model predictive control (MPC) is employed to design the control law, which can deal explicitly with the rate of progression of a virtual vehicle to be followed along the path. The distinct advantage over other control strategies is that input and system constraints are able to be handled straightforwardly in the optimization problem so that the robot can travel safely with a high velocity. Unlike nonholonomic mobile robots, omnidirectional mobile robots, which we focus on in this paper, have simultaneously and independently controlled rotational and translational motion capabilities. Then, our purposed MPC controller was validated by experiments with a real omnidirectional mobile robot.