Event-triggered tracking control of unicycle mobile robots

We investigate the stabilization of time-varying trajectories for unicycle mobile robots using event-triggered controllers. We follow an emulation-like approach in the sense that we first synthesize the controller while ignoring the communication constraints and we then derive an appropriate triggering condition. The solutions to the robot model are proved to practically converge towards the given reference trajectory, under some condition on the latter. Furthermore, the existence of a uniform minimum amount of time between any two transmissions is ensured. Afterward, experimental results are presented where the controller has been implemented on a remote computer which transmits its output to the mobile robot via an IEEE 802.11g wireless network. The proposed event-triggering strategy is able to significantly reduce the need for communication compared to a classical time-triggered setup while ensuring similar, if not better, tracking performances.