Sliding Mode Observer-Based Sliding Mode Control for Path Following of a Differential Drive Automated Mobile Robot

Applications of automated mobile robots (AMR) can be found in industry, defense, home appliances, etc. Path following and direct commanding to an AMR are critical operations for most applications. To achieve these tasks, global coordinates concerning an AMR are to be known, which are usually not measurable. Moreover, an AMR is commanded to follow different paths while subjected to different terrains. Hence a robust control approach ought to be designed with an observer to achieve this goal. In this work, a sliding mode observer (SMO) is designed to estimate the global coordinates of the path for an AMR. Then a sliding mode controller (SMC) is designed to control the AMR for user-desired path following. The proposed SMO-based SMC design provides a robust approach to solving this problem, which can be used for practical applications. The complete proof is done using the Lyapunov approach, and its effectiveness is shown by numerical simulations undertaken in MATLAB/Simulink® environment.