Handbook of Research on Advancements in Robotics and Mechatronics

The goal of this chapter is to enable a nonholonomic mobile robot to track a specified trajectory with minimum tracking error. Towards that end, an adaptive P controller is designed whose gain parameters are tuned by using two feed-forward neural networks. Back-propagation algorithm is chosen for online learning process and posture-tracking errors are considered as error values for adjusting weights of neural networks. The tracking performance of the controller is illustrated for different trajectories with computer simulation using Matlab/Simulink. In addition, open-loop response of an experimental mobile robot is investigated for these different trajectories. Finally, the performance of the proposed controller is compared to a standard PID controller. The simulation results show that “adaptive P controller using neural networks” has superior tracking performance at adapting large disturbances for the mobile robot.