Control of the motion of a small-scale car with four steerable wheels (Q1767949)

The presented paper deals with the control of the motion of a small-scale car moving on the horizontal plane. The car is composed of a frame, two identical rear wheels, an axle that passes through the centers of these wheels; two identical front wheels, and an axle that passes through the centers of the front wheels. The angular velocity of each of the wheels about its axis is driven and controlled separately. The car is equipped with two mechanisms, one in the rear axle and one in the front axle, that make the wheels steerable in such a manner that all the time the planes of both rear wheels are parallel and the planes of both front wheels are parallel. The car is driven and controlled by six torques. All wheels are rolling without slipping on the above-mentioned plane. A control law is developed for the car to perform a point-to-point maneuver. This maneuver is performed using three different control modes, that is, using six, five, and four control torques. The work is a continuation of a previous paper by one of the authors.