Sliding Mode Control for Safe Trajectory Tracking with Moving Obstacles Avoidance: Experimental Validation on Planar Robots

2026-04-27

AI Summary

This work addresses the challenge of safe control for mobile robots in dynamic environments, where precise trajectory tracking and collision avoidance must be simultaneously guaranteed. A unified robust safety control framework is proposed that leverages a generalized kinematic transformation to cast the dynamics of heterogeneous platforms—including Ackermann-steered ground vehicles, differential-drive robots, and quadrotors—into a strict-feedback form. A sliding-mode controller is designed to achieve high-precision trajectory tracking, while a Collision Cone Control Barrier Function (C3BF)-based safety filter rigorously enforces obstacle avoidance constraints. Notably, this study presents the first application of sliding-mode control to Ackermann-steered ground robots. The approach’s generality, robustness, and safety are validated through both simulations and physical experiments across all three robotic platforms.

Technology Category

• Intelligent Robots: Multimodal Perception & Sensor Fusion
• Natural Language Processing: Safety and Robustness
• Philosophy and Ethics of AI: Safety, Robustness & Trustworthiness

Application Category

• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Novel mobile and WoT systems, and system-of-systems
• Security and Privacy: Tracking, profiling, and countermeasures against them
• Responsible Web: Machine-in-the-loop, human agency and autonomy

Abstract

This paper presents a unified control framework for robust trajectory tracking and moving obstacle avoidance applicable to a broad class of mobile robots. By formulating a generalized kinematic transformation, we convert diverse vehicle dynamics into a strict feedback form, facilitating the design of a Sliding Mode Control (SMC) strategy for precise and robust reference tracking. To ensure operational safety in dynamic environments, the tracking controller is integrated with a Collision Cone Control Barrier Function (C3BF) based safety filter. The proposed architecture guarantees asymptotic tracking in the presence of external disturbances while strictly enforcing collision avoidance constraints. The novelty of this work lies in designing a sliding mode controller for ground robots like the Ackermann drive, which has not been done before. The efficacy and versatility of the approach are validated through numerical simulations and extensive real-world experiments on three distinct platforms: an Ackermann-steered vehicle, a differential drive robot, and a quadrotor drone. Video of the experiments are available at https://youtu.be/dWcxwum96vk

Problem

• trajectory tracking
• moving obstacle avoidance
• mobile robots
• safety
• dynamic environments

Innovation

• Sliding Mode Control
• Collision Cone Control Barrier Function
• Ackermann-steered vehicle
• Robust trajectory tracking
• Dynamic obstacle avoidance