740 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SYSTEMS, MAN, AND CYBERNETICS: SYSTEMS, VOL. 46, NO.
6, JUNE 2016
Trajectory-Tracking Control of Mobile Robot
Systems Incorporating Neural-Dynamic
Optimized Model Predictive Approach
Zhijun Li, Senior Member, IEEE, Jun Deng, Renquan Lu, Yong Xu, Jianjun Bai,
and Chun-Yi Su, Senior Member, IEEE
AbstractMobile robots tracking a reference trajectory are
constrained by the motion limits of their actuators, which impose
the requirement for high autonomy driving capabilities in robots.
This paper presents a model predictive control (MPC) scheme
incorporating neural-dynamic optimization to achieve trajectory
tracking of nonholonomic mobile robots (NMRs). By using the
derived tracking-error kinematics of nonholonomic robots, the
proposed MPC approach is iteratively transformed as a con-
strained quadratic programming (QP) problem, and then a
primaldual neural network is used to solve this QP problem
over a finite receding horizon. The applied neural-dynamic opti-
mization can make the cost function of MPC converge to the
exact optimal values of the formulated constrained QP. Compared
with the existing fast MPC, which requires repeatedly calculat-
ing the Hessian matrix of the Langragian and then solves a
quadratic program. The computation complexity reaches O(n3 ),
while the proposed neural-dynamic optimization contains O(n2 )
operations. Finally, extensive experiments are provided to illus-
trate that the MPC scheme has an effective performance on a
real mobile robot system.
Index TermsModel predictive controls (MPCs), neural-
dynamic optimization, quadratic programming (QP) problem,
trajectory tracking.
I. I NTRODUCTION
ONHOLONOMIC mobile robot (NMR) control has
N attracted significant attention from both academia and
Manuscript received April 29, 2015; accepted June 13, 2015. Date of pub-
lication August 31, 2015; date of current version May 13, 2016. This work
was supported in part by the Natural Science Foundation of China under
Grant 61174045 and Grant 61573147, in part by the China National Funds for
Distinguished Young Scientists under Grant 61425009, in part by the Program
for New Century Excellent Talents in University under Grant NCET-12-0195,
in part by the Guangzhou Research Collaborative Innovation Projects under
Grant 2014Y2-00507, and in part by the National High-Tech Research and
Development Program of China (863 Program) under Grant 2015AA042303.
This paper was recommended by Associate Editor S. Tong.
Z. Li and J. Deng are with the Key Laboratory of Autonomous System
and Network Control, College of Automation Science and Engineering,
South China University of Technology, Guangzhou 200240, China (e-mail:
zjli@ieee.org).
R. Lu and Y. Xu are with the School of Automation, Guangdong
University of Technology, and Guangdong Key Laboratory of IoT Information
Processing, Guangzhou 510006, China (e-mail: rqlu@hdu.edu.cn).
J. Bai is with the Institute of Information and Control, Hangzhou Dianzi
University, Hangzhou 310018, China (e-mail: jjbai@hdu.edu.cn).
C.-Y. Su is with the Department of Mechanical and Industrial
Engineering, Concordia University, H3G 1M8 Montreal, QC, Canada, (e-mail:
cysu@alcor.concordia.ca).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available
online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TSMC.2015.2465352
2168-2216 c 2015 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
industry, and is a fundamentally important problem in the
robotics society [1][4]. The application can be found in
industry, domestic needs, dangerous areas, and entertainment.
Trajectory-tracking control of a mobile robot refers to the
actual position/orientation of a mobile robot converging to a
predefined reference path or a path produced by a moving
virtual target. From earlier studies, it is well known that an
artificial potential field can track the fixed target or moving vir-
tual target [5][8]. The main idea is to attract the robot to the
target, and repel from obstacles. It is traditional that the robot
can be treated as a point mass and its physical limits ignored.
For example, in the potential field-based control approaches,
the control outputs are normally proportional to the tracking
errors; therefore, the control outputs can be very large, when
the robot keeps away from the desired positions. On the con-
trary, the robots velocities vary with large fluctuations, when
the robot is near the desired position.
Recently, works have been done on the tracking control for
mobile robots [9], [10]. In [11], a complete solution for mobile
robots incorporating the dynamical uncertainties was reported.
In [12], adaptive force and motion control were considered
for force/motion tracking of mobile manipulators including
actuator dynamic uncertainties. However, the above reported
works do not address the inside constraints, including actua-
tor saturation, velocity increment, and some of the states of
the robots dynamics. To include these constraints in the con-
troller designs, model predictive control (MPC) is an ideal
tool, also known as receding horizon control, because it is
used to handle constraints through optimization procedures. In
MPC, the defined objective function is optimized repeatedly
over a finite moving prediction horizon. Utilizing the dynam-
ics model, the MPC can produce the control input for systems
within the system constraints. The objective of this paper is to
utilize the feature of MPC combined with the linear variational
inequalities based primaldual neural network (LVI-PDNN)
optimization for the trajectory tracking of two-wheeled driven
robots taking into account the inside constraints. This gives a
major motivation for this paper.
MPC can conduct online optimization of an objective func-
tion through an inputoutput predictive model over a finite
future horizon of sample times. An objective function based
on the current controlled variables can be optimally computed
at each step. In the next horizon sampling interval, the opti-
mization is reconducted with updated corresponding variables.
LI et al.: TRAJECTORY-TRACKING CONTROL OF MOBILE ROBOT SYSTEMS
Then, a sequence of control inputs can be obtained at each
step. Therefore, it is obvious that MPC consists of control
and planning.
For real-time implementation, online optimization for MPC
implementation is a fundamentally important issue for MPC
as applied to applications with high sampling rates. Since
this optimization requires significant computational power,
more computational burden imposes limits on MPC, which
is currently applied only to slower dynamic systems such as
chemical factories and oil refineries. Traditional optimization
approaches did not overcome the high-dimensional problems
and satisfy the real-time computation requirement. In [13],
based on the receding horizon controller, tracking control
of NMRs had been investigated. However, the computa-
tional complexity of the proposed approach was not analyzed.
In [14], tracking control of a mobile robot is achieved using
MPC, and in [15] tracking-error kinematic model for mobile
robots is linearized as well as analyzed at the equilibrium
point and transferred to an exact discrete form including the
time delay. However, both control schemes were built on
an objective quadratic function derived from the linearized
dynamics.
In [16], a nonlinear model predictive formation controller
was used on multiple omnidirectional mobile robots for track-
ing the desired targets, and in [17] a trajectory tracking
controller using MPC had been investigated for omnidirec-
tional mobile robots. However, in both the schemes the instinct
nature of nonholonomic constraints is not included. In [18],
tracking control and stabilization of an NMR were consid-
ered and presented using a model predictive controller. In [43],
an approach called fast optimization for real-time control on
embedded system (FORCES) was utilized to compute the
control inputs for autonomous racing cars, where linear time
varying models were obtained to build local approximations
of nonlinear optimization in the form of convex quadratic
programs [44], [45]. However, FORCES requires repeated cal-
culation of the Hessian matrix of the Langragian to solve a QP,
which brings extra computational complexity. From the above
discussion, each scheme suffers from its own disadvantages. In
this paper, motivated by the above results, by considering the
complete constraints, including nonholonomic and the inside
constraints (actuator saturation, velocity increments, and some
of the variables of robotic dynamics), the trajectory tracking
control of the NMRs combining the MPC with the computa-
tion optimization is developed. The above mentioned works
can be considered as special examples of the development
results.
Recently, as increasingly faster computers are being devel-
oped, some highly efficient algorithms for MPC bring the
possibility of faster applications. For example, neural net-
work optimization approaches become promising algorithms
for addressing the problem of online heavy computational cost.
Some neurodynamics approaches for constrained optimization
problems have been discussed for real-time applications
in [19] and [20]. Compared with the traditional optimiza-
tion algorithms, these numerous results have shown many
advantages, especially in real-time applications. In [21],
based on a dual neural network method, the coordination
741
of redundant manipulators and its physical constraints of
joint torques and the generalized forces on the object were
investigated.
Therefore, to avoid the shortcomings of significant compu-
tational power, this paper proposes a novel model predictive
controller that incorporates neurodynamics optimization. Since
computation power is severely limited due to the onboard hard-
ware constraints in mobile robots, only online optimization
is allowed in this case. The utilization of the neurodynamics
optimization needs parallel computation in hardware support-
ing. Moreover, model predictive techniques are capable of
improving the performance and avoid constraint violation, as
they are robust under environmental disturbances and sen-
sor errors. However, since the onboard processing capacity
of mobile robot is limited, the MPC should be augmented by
neurodynamics optimization that is responsible for the non-
linear optimization. The latter can satisfy real-time processing
requirements.
In this paper, consider the physical constraints on mobile
robots motion, when it tracks a reference trajectory that
imposes the requirements of high autonomy driving capabili-
ties in robots, an MPC method incorporating PDNN optimiza-
tion is proposed for trajectory tracking control of NMRs. By
using the derived tracking-error kinematics of the robot, MPC
approach is iteratively transformed as a constrained QP prob-
lem, and then a LVI-PDNN method can be used to solve this
QP problem over a finite receding horizon. Another issue of
the MPC controller is the high computation cost. In this paper,
a LVI-PDNN method is implemented to handle QP problem
over a finite receding horizon and reduce the computation time.
The applied neural networks can make the cost function of
MPC converge to the exact optimal values of the formulated
constrained QP. Extensive experiments are provided to illus-
trate that MPC scheme has an effective performance on a real
mobile robot system.
The contributions of this paper can be summarized as
follows.
1) An MPC combined with neural-dynamics optimization
is proposed to achieve state constraint satisfaction and
successive feasibility for mobile robots.
2) Compared with the standard MPC, where the onboard
computation power is severely limited, the MPC is
augmented by a LVI-PDNN that is responsible for
cost function optimization. The latter satisfies real-time
computation requirements.
3) The proposed MPC algorithm is successfully imple-
mented to mobile robot control in trajectory tracking
under the velocity constraints and velocity increment
constraints (acceleration constraints).
II. K INEMATICS OF T WO -W HEEL D RIVEN
M OBILE ROBOTS
The investigated NMR is a typical two-wheel driven mobile
robot. The velocity of the two driving wheels (l and r )
can result in linear velocity = (l + r )/2 and angu-
lar velocity = (l r )/B with the distance between
two wheels being B. The positions of the robot are denoted
742 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SYSTEMS, MAN, AND CYBERNETICS: SYSTEMS, VOL. 46, NO. 6, JUNE 2016

by (x, y) and the orientation is . Then, the kinematics can be will be lost. Since the proposed MPC does not need the per-
described by sistent excitation condition, we will give the convergence in
MPC framework.
x cos cos 0
x = y = sin = sin 0 u (1)
0 1 III. M ODEL P REDICTIVE C ONTROL D ESIGN
where x = (x, y, )T are state variables, and u = (, )T is One can describe a general form of discrete nonlinear affine
the control vector. system [46]
Similarly, a reference state vector is defined as xr =
x(k + 1) = f (x(k)) + g(x(k))u(k) (8)
(xr , yr , r )T and a reference control signal vector ur =
(r , r )T as follows: subject to the constraints

xr r cos r cos r 0
x(k) X , k = 1, 2, . . . , N (9)
xr = yr = r sin r = sin r 0 ur . (2)
r r 0 1 u(k) U, k = 1, 2, . . . , Nu (10)
The kinematic errors xe can be defined as follows: where x Rn denotes the state vector, u Rm is the
input vector, f () and g() are continuous nonlinear functions,
xe cos sin 0 xr x
xe = ye = sin cos 0 yr y . (3) f (0) = 0, X Rn denotes compact sets, U Rm denotes com-
e 0 0 1 r pact sets containing its internal origin, N denotes prediction
horizon, N 1, and Nu denotes control horizon, N Nu 0.
Based on the error state and its dynamic model, the error MPC can be formulated as an iterative optimization pro-
state dynamics can be written as follows: cedure. Through measuring or estimating the current control
xe = ye + r cos e variables at each step, a cost function is optimized such that
one can get an optimal control input vector; then repeated
ye = xe + r sin e
online calculation of an optimization function is conducted.
e = r . (4) Consider MPC to steer the control variables to the origin; the
Redefine the control signals MPC cost function can be described by
   
u v cos e v 
k+N1
ue = 1 = r . (5) J(x, u) = L(x(j), u(j)) + F(x(k + N)) (11)
u2 r
j=k
Then, the dynamic model (4) can be rewritten as follows:
where L(x, u) denotes the stage cost and satisfies L(0, 0) = 0;
xe
and L(x, u) (|x, u|)2 denotes the terminal cost.
xe = ye
For control stability, the prediction and control horizon
e
N = Nu is sufficiently large, i.e., N = Nu = in stage cost L.
0 0 xe u1 Therefore, one can combine the terminal cost F(x(k + N)) and
= 0 0 ye + r sin e . (6) the state constraint of x(K + N)  with a region in the
0 0 0 e u2 neighborhood of origin  into MPC optimization to achieve
To analyze the local stability for the error state dynamic (4), closed-loop performance.
one can obtain a linearized error state model of (6) Then, the standard quadratic form of J(x, u) can be defined
as follows: as follows,   denotes the Euclidean norm, and Q and R are
positive-definite matrices:
0 r 0 1 0
x e = r 0 r xe + 0 0 ue . (7) 
N u 1
N
0 0 0 0 1 J(k) = x(k + j|k)2Q + u(k + j|k)2R (12)
j=1 j=0
The tracking control objective for the mobile robot (7) has
been transformed into a stabilization issue based on the track- where the predicted state in future horizon is x(k + j|k), the
ing error dynamics model (7). Therefore, consider steering increment of u(k + j|k) is u(k + j|k), with u(k + j|k) =
the position errors to the origin, so that the control inputs u(k + j|k) u(k 1 + j|k).
u1 and u2 need to be designed. It should be noted that the The tracking error dynamics (8) can be rewritten in the form
error dynamics (7) has a form of nonlinear affine system.
Remark 1: Although the error state model (7) is control- xe (k + 1) = f (xe (k)) + g(xe (k))ue (k) (13)
lable, and some local asymptotic stable controllers have been
proposed [22][24], the local linear controllable property subject to the constraints
would be lost when the linear speed and angular speed con-
umin ue (k) umax (14)
verge to zero. Therefore, many controllers developed so far
require this persistent excitation condition [25], [26], i.e., the umin u(k) umax (15)
controlled robot cannot be stopped; otherwise, the stability xmin xe (k) xmax (16)
LI et al.: TRAJECTORY-TRACKING CONTROL OF MOBILE ROBOT SYSTEMS 743

where xe = [x1 x2 x3 ]T = [xe ye e ]T R3 is the state vector; Problem (21) can be rewritten as a QP problem
u = [u1 u2 ]T R2 with u1 = r cos e , u2 = r is the
1
input vector; and min uT Wu + cT u (26)
2
x1 r x2
subject to
f (xe ) = x2 + r x1 + r x3 R3
x3 0 Eu b (27)

1 0 umin u umax (28)
g(xe ) = 0 0 R32
0 1 where the coefficients are
where denotes the sampling time, umin , umin , and xmin  
W = 2 GT QG + R R2Nu 2Nu
denote the lower bound, and umax , umax , and xmax denote  
the upper bound. c = 2GT Q g + f R2Nu
Define the following vectors:  T
E = I, I, G, G R(4Nu +6N)2Nu
x = [xe (k + 1|k), . . . , xe (k + N|k)]T R3N
(17) umin + u(k 1)
u(k) = [ue (k|k), . . . , ue (k + Nu 1|k)]T R2Nu (18) umax u(k 1)
b=
xmin + f + g R
4Nu +6N
.
u(k) = [u(k|k), . . . , u(k + Nu 1|k)] R . (19)
T 2Nu
xmax f g
The predicted output can be written in the following form:
x(k) = Gu(k) + f + g (20) IV. N EURODYNAMICS O PTIMIZATION
From (20), a unified QP formulation for the MPC is devel-
with
oped as (26). The online efficient solution to the QP problem
g(xe (k|k 1)) 0 is needed. In [19] and [20], gradient PDNNs were developed
g(xe (k + 1|k 1)) 0
for robotic manipulators and optimal feet forces distribution
G= .. .. .. and control of quadruped robots, respectively. In this paper,
. . .
the gradient neural-dynamics optimization is adopted to solve
g(xe (k + N 1|k 1)) g(xe (k + N 1|k 1))
the QP problem in the MPC.
R3N2Nu
f (xe (k|k 1))
f (xe (k + 1|k 1)) A. Model Description

f = .. R3N Denoting d as the uper/lower bounds of primaldual
.
decision vector d, one has
f (xe (k + N 1|k 1))      
u umax umin
g(xe (k|k 1)u(k 1)) d= +
, d =
, d = R6Nu +6N
g(xe (k + 1|k 1))u(k 1) y +y+ y

g = .. R3N .
. where the dual decision vector is defined as y R4Nu +6N ,
g(xe (k + N 1|k 1))u(k 1) for any i, the element y+ +
i  0 in y denotes +. Let the
coefficient matrix M and vector p being
Hence, the original optimization problem (12) subject to the
 
constraints (14)(16) becomes W ET
 2
M= R(6Nu +6N)(6Nu +6N)
  E 0
min Gu(k) + f + g + u(k)R 2
(21)  
c
Q
p= R(6Nu +6N) . (29)
b
subject to
Then, the following lemma is need for the subsequence
umin u(k) umax (22) derivation.
umin u(k 1) umax (23) Lemma 1 [19], [20]: Consider the constraints (14)(16),
umin u(k 1) + Iu(k) umax (24) then the QP problem (26)(28) can be converted to the fol-
xmin f + g + Gu(k) xmax (25) lowing LVI problem, and there exists a vector d  =
{d|d  d  d+ } satisfying
I 0 0
I I 0 (d d )T (Md + p) 0, d . (30)

where I = . . .. . R2Nu 2Nu , and umin , umin ,
.. .. . .. From [20], linear variational inequality (30) can be trans-
I I I formed to the piecewise linear equation as follows:
umin , and xmin are the lower bound and umax , umax , umax ,
and xmax denote the upper bound. P (d (Md + p)) d = 0 (31)
744 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SYSTEMS, MAN, AND CYBERNETICS: SYSTEMS, VOL. 46, NO. 6, JUNE 2016
Fig. 1. Network architecture of PDNN.
where P () is the piecewise-linear projection operator onto ,
or called piecewise-linear activation function, which can be
defined as P (d) = [P (d1 ), . . ., P (u6Nu +6N )]T with
di if di < di
P (di ) = di if di  di  di+ , i {1, . . . , 6Nu + 6N}
+ increment u. Consider any initial variable state, the vector
di if di > di+ .
To solve linear projection equation (31), one can develop the
following modified dynamical system for (31) as follows:
 
d = I + M T {P (d (Md + p)) d} (32)
with a positive parameter used to scale the convergence rate
of neural network model.
B. Network Architecture
The PDNN structure is shown in Fig. 1, where i repre-
sents the ith row of the matrix = I + M T , Fi (d) is the ith
row of matrix F = (I M)d, and k = 6Nu + 6N is the dimen-
sions of d. In Fig. 1, the PDNN belongs to Hopfield neural
network, it is a single-feedback nonlinear network with a sin-
gle layer structure, and adopts unsupervised learning methods
which are based on the Hebb rule. The PDNN is composed of
6Nu + 6N neurons, the size is the dimension sum of inequality
constraint (27), and primal decision vector u.
The ith neuron form is shown as follows:
   k  
di k
(i)
 is 45 cm. The wheels are driven by motors with rated torque
= i P Fi (d) pi di
dt
i=1 i=1
i = 1, 2 . . . , k = 6Nu + 6N (33)
where i = 1, . . . , k, P () is the piecewise-linear activation
function, from [37] and [38], it can be implemented using
operational amplifiers.
Remark 2: PDNN does not depend on penalty or analog
parameters, matrix inverses, or high-order nonlinear terms,
only with simple vector or matrix augmentation and operation.
Consequently, the architecture of PDNN to be implemented
by analog circuits could be much simpler than those of the
existing recurrent neural network methods [39], [40]. In view
of (33) and Fig. 1, the circuit for PDNN (32) consists of k
integrators, k limiters (being the piecewise-linear activation
functions), 2k2 multipliers, and 5k summers, so the proposed
PDNN methods contain O(7(6Nu + 6N) + 2(6Nu + 6N)2 )
operations. To solve QP (26)(28), a traditional sequential
quadratic programming (SQP) using gradient descent meth-
ods is usually adopted, where the computational complexity
requires repeated calculation of the Hessian matrix to solve a
quadratic program [29][31], such as the MATLAB optimiza-
tion functionQUADPROG or LINPROG. Traditional
QP solution needs O(N 4 +N +(6Nu +6N)Nu2 +(7Nu +6N)3 )
operations; it is impossible to be conducted online for mobile
robot systems, owing to inefficient numerical algorithm. When
compared with the computational complexity, the proposed
PDNN approach can reduce the computational cost. For solv-
ing the QP problem (26)(28), the computational time of the
traditional SQP approach costs 0.3 s, while for the PDNN
approach, it is only 0.038 s [note that the experiments are run
on a personal computer with a CPU of Inter Pentium E5700 @
3.00 GHz, 2 GB memory], which is smaller when compared
with the sampling time 0.1 s; so, PDNN method can realize
real-time purpose.
Theorem 1: Consider nonlinear affine system (8), and
design the MPC input u(k), and the corresponding control
d(t) = [uT , yT ]T of neurodynamics (32) would converge to
the optimal results d , among which the first mNu elements
are the optimal control inputs u in (26)(28). Moreover, the
convergence is exponential and one can find a constant > 0
satisfying d P (d (Md + p))22 d d 22 .
Proof: See the Appendix.
Remark 3: Consider suitable N, Nu , and Q, the closed-loop
stability can be assured, which can be found in [32] and [33].
For example, in [34], considering constrained linear systems,
if horizons are sufficiently large enough, the terminal stability
constraints are satisfied.
V. E XPERIMENT R ESULTS
The proposed control is implemented on the developed
mobile robot in the laboratory. The developed mobile robot
platform is shown in Fig. 2. The aluminum chassis of the
robot is 45 45 85 cm and contains two driving wheels,
two supporting wheels for balance, a 24-V battery power, a
SICK LMS111 Laser Finderm and a Kinect sensor. The diam-
eter of wheels is 19.5 cm and the distance between two wheels
72.1 mNm/A at 5200 rpm. The feedback of each motor uti-
lizes incremental encoder with 2048 pulses/turn and a gear
box with a factor of 85. The control computer uses Intel(R)
Pentium(R) E5700 processor (3.0 GHz).
The control structure consists of two levels as shown in
Fig. 3. In the high-level control, the algorithms are devel-
oped in Visual C++ environments and run on an on-board
computer with a sampling interval of 100 ms. The on-board
computer communicates with the Elmo driver through CAN
bus, which controls the servo motor through computed torque
control. Wheel encoders are sent back to the Elmo driver and
on-board computers. The lower level control realizes computer
torque of the high-level commands. The Elmo driver con-
troller performs three basic tasks: 1) communicating with the
LI et al.: TRAJECTORY-TRACKING CONTROL OF MOBILE ROBOT SYSTEMS 745

Fig. 5. Errors of tracking circle.

Fig. 2. Developed mobile service robot.

Fig. 6. Convergent behaviors of the PDNN for tracking circle.

Fig. 3. Control architecture of the mobile robot.

In these experiments, the two tracking trajectories are pro-
vided. First, the chosen reference trajectory is a circle, which
can be described as follows:
xr = 2 cos( )
yr = 2 sin( ).
The parameters of MPC are chosen as N = 3, Nu = 2, Q = I,
R = 0.1I, umin = [1, . . . , 1] R4 , umax = [1, . . . , 1] R4 ,
xmin = [ 1, . . . , 1] R9 , xmax = [1, . . . , 1] R9 , umin =
[ 0.1, . . . , 0.1] R4 , and umin = [0.1, . . . , 0.1] R4 .
The optimization problem (26)(28) can be computed by using
the PDNN (32) during each 100 ms sampling interval. The
experiment results are listed in Figs. 46, where Figs. 4 and 5
show the trajectory tracking and tracking errors by the mobile
robot with respect to the reference trajectory, respectively.
Fig. 6 shows the output u in each sample time.
Second, the chosen reference trajectory is a lane-change
curve, whose equation can be described as follows:
Fig. 4. Tracking a circle.
2
yr = .
higher-level on-board computer through Kvaser CAN device; 1 + e2(xr 2)
2) reading encoder feedback; and 3) generating computed The parameters of MPC are chosen as N = 3, Nu = 2, Q = 5I,
torques. R = I, umin = [ 1, . . . , 1] R4 , umax = [1, . . . , 1] R4 ,
746 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SYSTEMS, MAN, AND CYBERNETICS: SYSTEMS, VOL. 46, NO. 6, JUNE 2016
Fig. 7. Tracking a lane-change curve.
Fig. 8. Errors of tracking lane-change curve.
Fig. 9. Convergent behaviors of the PDNN for tracking lane-change curve.
xmin = [ 1, . . . , 1] R9 , xmax = [1, . . . , 1] R9 , umin =
[ 0.1, . . . , 0.1] R4 , and umin = [0.1, . . . , 0.1] R4 .
The optimization problem (26)(28) can be computed by using
PDNN (32) during each 100 ms sampling step. The experiment
results are listed in Figs. 79, where the tracking trajectory of
the mobile robot is shown in Fig. 7, and the tracking errors are
depicted in Fig. 8. Through implementing the proposed MPC
approach, we can see that the mobile robot can successfully
Fig. 10. Tracking a circle using SQP-based MPC.
Fig. 11. Errors of tracking circle using SQP-based MPC.
track the desired lane-change curve trajectory in real time.
Fig. 9 shows the output u.
In contrast, since SQP has been widely utilized in the MPC.
To highlight the performance of our presented approach, the
traditional SQP for comparison is chosen. Under the same cho-
sen MPC parameters and the sampling step, the control results
are listed in Figs. 1015. Figs. 10 and 13 show the tracking
trajectories of the mobile robot, and the tracking errors are
shown in Figs. 11 and 14. The produced inputs of SQP are
shown in Figs. 12 and 15. In Fig. 10, we can see the track-
ing errors are larger and in Fig. 13, we can see the tracking
errors become larger with time. In Fig. 13, it is obvious that
the actual trajectories deviates the desired one.
After comparing these experimental results, it can be con-
cluded that the proposed method has the better performance
and more suitable for practice implementation. From track-
ing performance, we can see the proposed control is with
LI et al.: TRAJECTORY-TRACKING CONTROL OF MOBILE ROBOT SYSTEMS 747

Fig. 12. Control inputs of SQP-based MPC. Fig. 15. Control inputs of SQP-based MPC.

lots of computation source and is more dependent on initial

values.

VI. C ONCLUSION
This paper proposes an MPC scheme incorporating PDNN
optimization to achieve trajectory tracking of NMR. By using
the derived tracking-error kinematics of nonholonomic robots,
the proposed MPC approach is iteratively transformed as a
constrained QP, then a LVI-PDNN over a finite receding hori-
zon is employed. Finally, extensive experiments are conducted
to illustrate the performance of the proposed MPC scheme on
a real mobile robot system.

A PPENDIX
Proof of Theorem 1: Consider nonlinear affine system (8),
we need to design the MPC u(k) and the corresponding con-
Fig. 13. Tracking a lane-change curve using SQP-based MPC. trol increment u. For any initial variable state, we define
the primaldual decision vector d(t) = [uT , yT ]T . To prove
exponential convergence of the system, we firstly introduce
projection related inequalities (P ()  )T ( P ())
0( Rn+m+dim(b) ,  ), we can obtain
(P (d (Md + p) d )T
(d (Md + p) P (d (Md + p))) 0 (34)
it can be written as
(d P (d (Md + p)))T
((Md + p) d + P (d (Md + p))) 0. (35)
Combining (35) and (31), we have
(d P (d (Md + p)))T (Md + p) 0. (36)
Then, combining (35) and (36), we can readily have
(d P (d (Md + p)))T
Fig. 14. Errors of tracking lane-change curve using SQP-based MPC. (M(d d ) d + P (d (Md + p))) 0. (37)
The above (37) can be further written as follows:
better performance in comparison with MPC using SQP. The
main difference is that the proposed MPC is more suitable for (d d + d P (d (Md + p)))T
the on-board computation, while the SQP-based MPC needs (M(d d ) d + P (d (Md + p))) 0. (38)
748 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SYSTEMS, MAN, AND CYBERNETICS: SYSTEMS, VOL. 46, NO. 6, JUNE 2016

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Zhijun Li (M07SM09) received the Dr.Eng.
degree in mechatronics from Shanghai Jiao Tong
University, Shanghai, China, in 2002.
From 2003 to 2005, he was a Post-Doctoral
Fellow with the Department of Mechanical
Engineering and Intelligent Systems, University
of Electro-Communications, Tokyo, Japan. From
2005 to 2006, he was a Research Fellow with
the Department of Electrical and Computer
Engineering, National University of Singapore,
Singapore, and Nanyang Technological University,
Singapore. From 2007 to 2011, he was an Associate Professor with the
Department of Automation, Shanghai Jiao Tong University. In 2008, he
was a Visiting Scholar with Microsoft Research Asia, Beijing, China. Since
2012, he has been a Professor with the College of Automation Science and
Engineering, South China university of Technology, Guangzhou, China. Since
2015, he has been a Visiting Professor with Faculty Science and Technology,
University of Macau, Macau, China. He has coauthored three books
published in Springer and CRC Press, and over 100 international journal and
conference papers. His current research interests include nonlinear control,
neural network optimization, service robotics, and tele-operation systems.
Dr. Li is an Editor-at-Large of the Journal of Intelligent and Robotic
Systems, an Associate Editor of the IEEE T RANSACTIONS ON N EURAL
N ETWORKS AND L EARNING S YSTEMS, and an Editorial Board Member of
several international journals.
749
Jun Deng received the B.Eng. degree in control sci-
ence and engineering from the College of Electrical
Engineering and Automation, Jiangxi University of
Science and Technology, Ganzhou, China, in 2012.
He is currently pursuing the masters degree from
the College of Automation Science and Engineering,
South China University of Technology, Guangzhou,
China.
His current research interests include mobile
robot, model predictive control, neural network
control, and optimization.
Renquan Lu received the Ph.D. degree in control
science and engineering from Zhejiang University,
Hangzhou, China, in 2004.
He is currently a Full Professor with the Institute
of Information and Control, Hangzhou Dianzi
University, Hangzhou, China. His current research
interests include robust control, singular systems,
and complex systems.
Yong Xu was born in Zhejiang Province, China,
in 1983. He received the B.S. degree in information
engineering from Nanchang Hangkong University,
Nanchang, China, in 2007, the M.S. degree in
information and control from Hangzhou Dianzi
University, Hangzhou, China, in 2010, and the Ph.D.
degree in cyber-system and control from Zhejiang
University, Hangzhou.
He is currently a Lecturer with the Institute
of Information and Control, Hangzhou Dianzi
University. His current research interests include
networked control systems, estimation, and stochastic systems.
Jianjun Bai received the B.S. degree in control
science and engineering from the University of
Petroleum China, Beijing, China, in 2006, and the
Ph.D. degree from Zhejiang University, Hangzhou,
China.
He is currently a Lecturer with the Institute
of Information and Control, Hangzhou Dianzi
University, Hangzhou. His current research interests
include robust control, networked control systems,
and multirobot system.
Chun-Yi Su (SM99) received the Ph.D. degree in
control engineering from the South China University
of Technology, Guangzhou, China, in 1990.
He is with the College of Automation Science and
Engineering, South China University of Technology,
on leave from Concordia University, Montreal, QC,
Canada. After a seven-year stint at the University of
Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada, he joined Concordia
University, Montreal, in 1998. He conducts research
in the application of automatic control theory to
mechanical systems. He has authored or co-authored
over 300 publications, which have appeared in journals, book chapters, and
conference proceedings. His current research interests include control of sys-
tems involving hysteresis nonlinearities.
Dr. Su has served as an Associate Editor for the IEEE T RANSACTIONS ON
AUTOMATIC C ONTROL, the IEEE T RANSACTIONS ON C ONTROL S YSTEMS
T ECHNOLOGY, and the Journal of Control Theory and Applications. He
was on the Editorial Board of 18 journals, including the International
Federation of Automatic Control journals of Control Engineering Practice and
Mechatronics. He has also severed for several conferences as an Organizing
Committee Member, including the General Co-Chair of the 2012 IEEE
International Conference on Mechatronics and Automation, and the Program
Chair of the 2007 IEEE Conference on Control Applications.