498
3, JULY 2017
Neural Network Based Terminal Sliding Mode
Control for WMRs Affected by an Augmented
Ground Friction With Slippage Effect
Ming Yue, Linjiu Wang, and Teng Ma
Abstract—Wheeled mobile robots (WMRs) encounter unavoid-
able slippage especially on the low adhesion terrain such that the
robots stability and accuracy are reduced greatly. To overcome
this drawback, this article presents a neural network (NN) based
terminal sliding mode control (TSMC) for WMRs where an
augmented ground friction model is reported by which the uncer-
tain friction can be estimated and compensated according to the
required performance. In contrast to the existing friction models,
the developed augmented ground friction model corresponds to
actual fact because not only the effects associated with the mobile
platform velocity but also the slippage related to the wheel slip
rate are concerned simultaneously. Besides, the presented control
approach can combine the merits of both TSMC and radial basis
function (RBF) neural networks techniques, thereby providing
numerous excellent performances for the closed-loop system,
such as finite time convergence and faster friction estimation
property. Simulation results validate the proposed friction model
and robustness of controller; these research results will improve
the autonomy and intelligence of WMRs, particularly when
the mobile platform suffers from the sophisticated unstructured
environment.
Index Terms—Ground friction, radial basis function (RBF)
neural network (NN), slippage effect, terminal sliding mode
control (TSMC), wheeled mobile robot (WMR).
I. I NTRODUCTION
W HEELED mobile robots (WMRs), as a kind of classic
ground vehicle, are thoroughly subjected to unavoid-
able ground friction arising from wheel terrain interaction
during the whole operation process, especially in various so-
phisticated unstructured environment, such as rural road, grass
farm, seismic ruins, planetary surface, and so on (see e.g.,
[1]−[8]). In these cases, not taking account of ground friction
will greatly decrease the movement accuracy, reduce handling
Manuscript received May 18, 2016; accepted October 14, 2016. This
work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China
(61573078, 61573147), the International S&T Cooperation Program of China
(2014DFB70120), and the State Key Laboratory of Robotics and System (SKL
RS2015ZD06). Recommended by Associate Editor Zhijun Li. (Corresponding
author: Ming Yue.)
Citation: M. Yue, L. J. Wang, and T. Ma, “Neural network based terminal
sliding mode control for WMRs affected by an augmented ground friction with
slippage effect,” IEEE/CAA J. of Autom. Sinica, vol. 4, no. 3, pp. 498−506,
Jul. 2017.
M. Yue, L. J. Wang, and T. Ma are with the School of Automotive Engineer-
ing, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian 116024, China (e-mail: yueming
@dlut.edu.cn; wanglinjiu2010@mail.dlut.edu.cn; dlutmateng@mail.dlut.edu.
cn).
M. Yue is also with the State Key Laboratory of Robotics and System,
Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150001, China.
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/JAS.2017.7510553
IEEE/CAA JOURNAL OF AUTOMATICA SINICA, VOL. 4, NO.
performance and even make vehicle out of control. However,
apart from the serious effect by geological parameters, the
ground friction is closely related to vehicle motion state and
slippage condition, such that the friction possesses obvious
nonlinear and uncertain characteristics which in turn makes
it almost impossible to achieve the explicit friction value
for control design in practical implementation. Therefore,
exploring more accurate ground friction model and pursuing
effective compensation mechanism are key academic problems
so as to achieve high performance motion control of WMRs,
which attract considerable attention of numerous researchers
over the past few decades.
In the first place, a relative accurate dynamic model needs
to be developed after deep analysis of the action mechanism of
the ground friction for the purpose of achieving effective and
efficient control performance. Considering that the ground fric-
tion exhibits quite complicated and nonlinear dynamics, many
scholars attempt to provide this dynamic model with action
mechanism of exploiting interactive relationship between the
vehicle wheel and soil structure, see e.g., [9]−[12]. With a
large amount of experimental data, a precise friction model
can be obtained by combining the experimental data with
action mechanism. However, these derived models are only
aiming to the homogeneous geological framework, while as
far as the sophisticated outdoor environment is concerned, it
is unavailable to acquire the accurate model in prior according
to the varied ground parameters; therefore, this methodology
yields some limitations when it is applied in practice. accord-
ing to this way, a lot of researchers devote to deriving the
friction models by associating it with the vehicle motion states,
for instance, the widely used LuGre [13], Dahl’s [14], Magic
Formula [15] and so on. After analyzing the previous friction
models, it reveals that the models are usually adopted by
three classic friction effects to describe the complex nonlinear
models, namely coulomb, viscous and stribeck frictions [16]−
[18]. These three friction effects are all closely related to
the vehicle velocity, and it is really just assigned different
weights for various working conditions like starting, stopping,
and braking maneuvers. Nevertheless, another situation, that
is, slippage effect, needs to be taken into adequate account
in practical application, especially when suffered from low
adhesion ground. In this case, regardless of the slippage effect
and depending solely on the other three friction effects will
greatly degrade the friction accuracy. However, to the best of
our knowledge, few investigations concerning various effects
including slippage is reported in the literature, which motivates
us to develop a parametric ground friction model taken into
YUE et al.: NEURAL NETWORK BASED TERMINAL SLIDING MODE CONTROL FOR WMRS AFFECTED BY · · ·
full account for previous varied friction effect simultaneously
in this paper.
On the other hand, considerable studies are focusing on
the estimation and compensation of the uncertain, nonlinear
and dynamic ground friction for many years. Some contrib-
utors deem the ground friction as a whole term including
matched and unmatched elements and then update laws are
introduced to observe the true values in realtime [19], [20].
The advantages of this approach are simple, but the friction
effects are not completely clear. Correspondingly, other inves-
tigations are likely to employ parametric friction formulation
to estimate and compensate the ground friction. For example,
Li et al. proposed a decentralized adaptive control for the
robotic manipulators by employing update laws to estimate
the friction-like disturbance in [21], [22], and the study results
verified the effectiveness of the presented approach. In [23],
[24], an adaptive coupling control method was presented for
simultaneously stabilizing the load and driving the crane to
the desired position, in which the friction was adopted in
a parametric form for the compensation. In these ways, all
kinds of friction effects can be directly described by which
the friction action mechanism is able to be made clear. In
view of the control schemes, a variety of intelligent algorithms
are widely applied, like support vector machine [25], model
predictive control [26], [27], fuzzy logic [28], [29], neural net-
work (NN) [30], [31], etc. All of these control techniques can
deal with the estimation and compensation problems aiming
at the special control targets, but in terms of the presented
parametric friction model, the adaptive neural network is
utilized to construct update laws for estimation. Advantages of
adopting NN technique to estimate the ground friction yield
its powerful nonlinear function approaching capability, which
will offer the estimated system with faster convergence speed
and better disturbance rejection.
Furthermore, terminal sliding mode control (TSMC) is
exploited in this study to make the WMRs track an arbitrary
reference trajectory. Recently, TSMC has been paid increas-
ing interests since this approach can be directly designed
according to the performance requirement. Apart from the
advantages (e.g., parametric insensitivity and simplified design
procedure) associated with the common variable structure
control, TSMC possesses efficient regulation capability by
selecting an appropriate sliding manifold, and then it is widely
used in practice. For example, Hu et al. reported TSMC
with finite time convergence characteristic for spacecraft atti-
tude control including consideration of actuator misalignment,
fault tolerance, saturation limitation, [32]−[34], where TSMC
handled numerous control problems and then achieved high
attitude tracking performance. Likewise, in [35], [36], TSMC
with the aid of fuzzy inferencer based supervisor, was applied
to permanent magnet synchronous motor system for achieving
superior speed tracking and load disturbance rejection per-
formance which demonstrated the powerful robustness of the
TSMC for practical implementation. In terms of the WMRs,
TSMC is especially suitable for the control of this kind of
mobile platform, and the special advantages of its application
are as follows: on one hand, combining TSMC and NN
techniques, the convergence time of estimation for uncertain
ground friction can be governed effectively; on the other hand,
499
the finite time convergence characteristic of tracking errors of
robot posture can be controlled by a required performance.
With these treatments, the contradiction of the estimation and
tracking is able to be adjusted specifically rather than the trial-
and-error method.
To sum up, the main contributions of this paper are
1) A parametric dynamic model of the ground friction is
proposed where the slippage effects of the WMRs on the
low adhesion load are considered and various friction effects
related to the robot velocity are revealed at the same time.
2) Based on the present ground friction, a method combin-
ing NN and TSMC techniques is employed for the friction
estimation and trajectory tracking of WMRs, by which the
effective and efficient motion precision can also be achieved.
II. P RELIMINARY
A. Nonholonomic WMR Description
A typical nonholonomic wheeled mobile robot (WMR) is
shown in Fig. 1, which is assembled by two independent
wheels connected on the same shaft, DC motors installed on
the respective driving wheels, and a front universal wheel
supporting the mobile platform. Under earth-fixed frame,
the position of WMR can be described by the generalized
coordinates with three dimensions, namely q = [xc yc θ]T ,
where xc , yc are the displacement of the robot mass center, θ
denotes the orientation of the mobile robot. Define the velocity
vector of the WMR as v = [υ ω]T , where υ and ω represent
longitudinal velocity and steering speed, respectively. By La-
grangian modelling method, a classic dynamic formulation can
be achieved as follows
(
q̇ = S(q)v
(1)
M̄(q)v̇ + V̄(q, q̇)v = B̄(q)τ − B̄(q)τ d
where S(q) ∈ R3×2 is a transformation matrix associated
with nonholonomic constraint, M̄(q) ∈ R2×2 is a symmetric
inertia matrix, V̄(q, q̇) ∈ R2×2 represents the symmetric
coriolis matrix, B̄(q) ∈ R2×2 is the input transformation
matrix, τ = [τl τr ]T ∈ R2×1 where τl , τr stand for the output
torque of two DC motors installed on the related wheels,
respectively. τ d = [τd1 τd2 ]T ∈ R2×1 represents various
Fig. 1. A nonholonomic wheeled mobile robot.
500
disturbances for the robot including air resistance, unmodelled
errors, system friction etc. In this case, this disturbance can be
considered as the ground friction because the other elements
are so small such that they can be neglected. In terms of a
practical WMR, the matrices can be determined by
 
cos θ −d sin θ
S(q) =  sin θ d cos θ 
0 1
· ¸ · ¸
m 0 1 1 1
M̄(q) = , B̄(q) =
0 I − md2 r R −R
· ¸
k1 tanh (υ) − k2 |υ| υ + k3 υ
V̄(q, q̇) = 0, B̄τ d =
k4 tanh (ω) − k5 |ω| ω + k6 ω
where m is the mass of the robot, r is the radius of wheels,
R is the half wheelbase of the mobile platform, d is the
distance from mass center to midpoint of two wheels axle
and I represents the moment of inertia of the robot with
respect to the same midpoint. In addition, k1 , k2 , k3 , k4 ,
k5 , k6 are unknown positive constants, indicating friction and
interference coefficients in different ground conditions. More
details about this dynamic model for WMR can be found in
[37].
B. Ground Friction Model With Slippage Effect
The ground friction in system (1) is supposed to be large
enough such that the pure rolling constraint condition be held
throughout, i.e., the nonholonomic constraint is satisfied from
beginning to end. However, it is impossible in practice since
the slippage will unavoidably occur, especially on the low
adhesion ground. Let s be the slip rate, and when s 6= 0, the
ground friction becomes quite different from that as exhibited
in (1). As shown in Fig. 2, after analyzing the current ground
friction model about the longitudinal slippage, a relatively
simplified dynamic model is presented as follows
 and rotational velocities for WMR. Notice that in practice

Fs = µFz
µ = C1 (1 − e−C2 s ) − C3 s (2)

F = mg
z
where Fs is the slipping disturbance-like force, Fz denotes the
supporting force and µ indicates the ground adhesion coeffi-
cient. Besides, C1 , C2 and C3 are friction curve coefficients,
due to the condition of road and tires. Here, the slip ratio is
defined as follows
rωw − υw
s= (3)
max (rωw , υw )
where υw is the longitudinal velocity of the wheel, ωw
represents wheel rotation speed. If slippage phenomenon does
not occur, it holds that υw = rωw , i.e., s = 0; otherwise, if the
slippage phenomenon occurs, it follows that υw 6= rωw , i.e., s
6= 0. Hence, the ground friction model of WMR considering
the slippage effect can be rewritten as
M̄(q)v̇ = B̄(q) (τ − τ d ) + Fs (4)
where Fs = [Fs1 Fs2 ] ∈ R2 is the longitudinal slipping inter-
ference matrix with Fs1 and Fs2 being the ground friction for
IEEE/CAA JOURNAL OF AUTOMATICA SINICA, VOL. 4, NO. 3, JULY 2017
longitudinal and rotational ones. Furthermore, for simplicity,
define new matrix variables Ff = [Ff 1 Ff 2 ]T = B̄τ d − Fs , in
which Ff 1 and Ff 2 are on behalf of the entire longitudinal and
rotational disturbances mainly constituting the ground friction.
Therefore, the model (4) can be further improved as
M̄(q)v̇ = B̄(q)τ − Ff . (5)
Fig. 2. Friction model with the effect of slippage.
With the previous analysis and the introduced friction model
with slippage effect, an augmented ground friction considering
slippage and other effects associated with velocity can be
formulated by Ff = [Ff 1 Ff 2 ]T , where


 Ff 1 = k1 tanh(υ) − k2 |υ|υ + k3 υ

 £ ¤
 − C1 (1 − e−C2 s ) − C3 s mg


Ff 2 = k4 tanh(ω) − k5 |ω|ω + k6 ω

 £ ¤
− C1 (1 − e−C2 s ) − C3 s mg
As can be seen from the elements of Ff , it suggests that this
scenario only explores the ground frictions for longitudinal
the friction has taken place on the specific wheel, but one
can readily transform this friction to the form in terms of the
longitudinal and rotational velocities, and the present Ff can
be achieved afterwards. Therefore, the control objective of this
study can be summarized as follows: consider the dynamic
model (5) with the augmented ground friction Ff ; find an
appropriate controller τ such that the practical longitudinal
and rotational velocities, namely υ and ω, can track their
desired velocities within a finite time.
III. C ONTROL S YSTEM S YNTHESIS
A. RBF Neural Networks
In general, in order to realize the previous control ob-
jective, provided that a high-performance objective needs to
be obtained, update laws should be employed by which the
uncertain ground friction can be observed in realtime and then
it is compensated in the following. Further examination of the
ground friction Ff for the WMRs reveals that the friction with
slippage effect is concerned with numerous parameters, i.e.,
k1 , k2 , k3 , k4 , k5 , k6 , C1 , C2 , C3 , needing to be determined
by estimated algorithms. Taking this fact into account, simply
YUE et al.: NEURAL NETWORK BASED TERMINAL SLIDING MODE CONTROL FOR WMRS AFFECTED BY · · ·
relying on the gradient reaching law method obviously cannot
meet the requirement of the system control performance;
therefore this scenario attempts to utilize radial basis function
(RBF) neural networks to determine the considerable friction
parameters due to its powerful self-learning capability and
universal approximation ability for arbitrary nonlinear dynam-
ics. A multi-input multi-output (MIMO) RBF neural network
can be transformed into a series of multi-input single-output
(MISO) network, as illustrated in Fig. 3, which consists of
three layer network structures, i.e., the input layer (i layer),
hidden layer (j layer) and output layer (m layer).
Fig. 3. A MISO RBF neural network structure.
In terms of this RBF neural network, x = [xi ]T , i = 1,
2, . . . , n, denotes network’s input; the output of the network
hidden layer is represented by h = [hj ]T , j = 1, 2, . . . , m,
where hj indicates the RBF, meaning the output of the first
hidden layer neurons, as follows
à !
2
kx − cj k
hj = exp − (6)
2b2j
where, cj = [cij ]T ∈ Rn×1 , j = 1, 2, . . . , m, with cj being
the center point coordinate vector of the j hidden layer neurons
Gaussian basis function; b = [b1 , b2 , . . . , bm ]T , where bj is the
gaussian basis function width in the j hidden layer neurons;
and W = [w1 , w2 , . . . , wm ]T represents network weights. In
the following, the output of RBF neural networks can be given
by
ym (t) = W T h = w1 h1 + w2 h2 + · · · + wm hm .
Therefore, the RBF neural network algorithm can be sum-
marized as follows
 
 ym (t) = W T h(x)

 
h = [h h . . . h ]T
1 Ã 2 m !
2 (8)

h = exp − kx − cj k

 j , j = 1, 2, . . . , m.
2b2j
More details about this classic RBF neural network are
being referred to reference [38], [39], and they are omitted
here for the sake of simplicity.
B. Tracking Controller With TSMC Technique
Sliding mode control (SMC), as a kind of variable structure
control technology, has been widely used in most engineering
fields due to its many advantages such as parameter insen-
sitivity, fast convergence speed and anti-interference ability,
501
and so on. In addition, compared with other traditional de-
sign methods, TSMC can manage control convergence time,
thereby attracting much more attention recently especially for
designing the performance-oriented high-precision controller.
Consider this special property of TSMC, this study uses it
to construct update laws for estimation of ground friction
and synthesis tracking control system so as to propose an
arbitrarily adjustable estimator and controller within finite time
convergence.
Furthermore, considering the presented models (4) and (5)
are based on the robot velocity, for tracking the mobile robot
position in realtime, one can define new state variables as z
= [xv ϕ]T where xv stands for the system displacement along
the direction of longitudinal velocity, and ϕ indicates heading
angle of the mobile robot platform. Thus, the system (5) can
be improved again as follows
D(q)z̈ + F̄f = u (9)
T
where u = [u1 u2 ] is a new control input with u1 = (τl +
τr )/r and u2 = (τl − τr )/r; D(q) = diag{[m (I − md2 )/R]}
is an improved inertial mass matrix; and F̄f = [Ff 1 Ff 2 /R]T
is a ground friction-like matrix disturbance. Notice that in spite
of the difference in order, (5) and (9) are the same in the sense
of physical model; the dynamic model (9) is more favorable
to construct the following sliding manifold which is related to
the displacement of tracking errors. With these preparations,
in order to achieve the trajectory tracking purpose, the desired
velocity needed to be tracked can be given as z d = [xvd ϕd ]T
and it follows that ż d = v d = [vd ωd ]T . Then, the variables
of state tracking error based on the level of displacement can
be governed by e = z − z d . In the following, it holds that ė
= ż − ż d = v − v d and ë = z̈ − z̈ d = v̇ − v̇ d .
In order to design TSMC for WMRs, a Lemma ought to be
given in the first place.
Lemma 1: Consider a first order system as ẋ = u. For
achieving the convergence within a finite time, the closed-
loop control system will be globally asymptotically stable
with the nonsmooth controller as u = −ksigα (x), where
α
sigα (x) = sgn(x)|x| with 0 < α < 1, k > 0, and sgn(·)
represents a symbolic function.
(7) By substituting the presented controller into the first order
system, the closed-loop system can be achieved as ẋ =
−ksigα (x). Then, the solution for the system can be formu-
lated by
£ 1−α
¤ 1−α1
 sgn (x(0)) |x(0)| − k(1 − α)t ,



 |x(0)|1−α
x(t) = 0 < t ≤
 (1 − α)k



 |x(0)|1−α
 0, t> .
(1 − α)k
(10)
According to the above Lemma 1, a fractional order sliding
mode surface can be defined as follows
s = ė + ΩE, Ė = sigβ (ė) (11)
T
where s = [s1 s2 ] , Ω = diag{[σ1 σ2 ]} stands for a positive
definite symmetric matrix, and β = diag{[β1 β2 ]} with 0 <
β1 < 1 and 0 < β2 < 1. Hence, consider the positive definite
Lyapunov function as
502
1 T
V1 = s D(q)s. (12)
2 ˙
Differentiating V1 with respect to time along the trajectory
(9) yields that
V̇1 = sT D(q)(ë + Ω Ė)
h i
= sT D(q) ë + Ωsigβ (ė)
h i
= sT D(q) v̇ − v̇ d + Ωsigβ (ė)
h i
= sT u − F̄f − D(q)v̇ d + D(q)Ωsigβ (ė) . (13)
Consequently, the controller can be designed as
u = −Kw s−Kv sgn(s)+D(q)v̇ d −D(q)Ωsigβ (ė)+F̄f (14)
where Kw = diag{[kw1 kw2 ]} and Kv = diag{[kv1 kv2 ]}
are positive definite matrices with kw1 , kw2 , kv1 and kv2
being all positive design parameters for the controller. It is
worth pointing out that in spite of the fact that the presented
controller (14) only has first order form, it contains both the
displacement and velocity elements since the sliding manifold
s includes the position and velocity tracking error information.
By substituting controller (14) into the system (13), it holds
that
V̇1 = −sT Kw s − sT Kv sgn(s) ≤ 0. (15)
In the sense of Lyapunov stability theorem, all the signals in
the closed-loop system are bounded and the convergence time
can be managed by selecting appropriate design parameters Ω
and β. Moreover, according to the finite time formula (10) of
the Lemma 1, the finite times ts can be governed by
· ¸ · ¸T
t |ė1 (0)|1−β1 |ė2 (0)|1−β2
ts = f υ = (16)
tf ω σ1 (1 − β1 ) σ2 (1 − β2 )
where tf υ and tf ω are the terminal times for the longitudinal
and rotational tracking subsystems, respectively.
C. RBF Neural Network Compensation
As aforementioned, RBF neural network technique is in-
tended to be applied to construct adaptive update laws to esti-
mate the numerous parameters about ground friction. Toward
this end, define F̄ˆf as the estimate of disturbance-like ground
friction F̄f , and then the estimate error can be formulated by
F̄˜f = F̄ˆf − F̄f . Because of the slow time-varying characteristic
of ground friction compared with the computer processing
˙ ˙
speed, one has F̄˜ = F̄ˆ and afterwards it holds that F̄˙ = 0.
f f f According to the previous analysis, the stability of entire
With these relationships and assumptions, the control law (14)
can be improved with the estimated values as follows
u = −Kw s − Kv sgn(s) + D(q)v̇ d − D(q)Ωsigβ (ė) + F̄ˆf .
(17)
By using RBF neural network approximation, F̄ˆf is es-
sentially the output of RBF neural network, which can be
governed by
F̄ˆf = Ŵ T h(x) (18)
where x = v = [υ ω]T represents the network input. Besides,
Ŵ is the estimate of network weights W ; likewise, the corre-
sponding estimation error can be governed by W̃ = Ŵ − W ,
IEEE/CAA JOURNAL OF AUTOMATICA SINICA, VOL. 4, NO. 3, JULY 2017
and because of the slow time-varying characteristic of the
˙ = Ŵ
weights for a stable network, it can be obtained that W̃
as well since Ẇ = 0.
According to the elementary theory of adaptive RBF neural
network, the update laws for network weights can be gotten
by
˙
Ŵ = −Jh(x)sT (19)
where J = J T > 0 is a designed gain matrix to determine the
estimation.
In order to prove the design of the proposed controllers,
an augmented positive Lyapunov function can be defined as
follows
1 1
V2 = sT D(q)s + tr (W̃ T J −1 W̃ ) (20)
2 2
where tr stands for the trace of the matrix. Similarly, differen-
tiating V2 along the trajectory (9) with respect to time results
in
˙ )
V̇2 = sT D(q)ṡ + tr (W̃ T J −1 W̃
h i
= sT u − F̄f − D(q)v̇ d + D(q)Ωsigβ (ė)
˙ ).
+ tr (W̃ T J −1 W̃ (21)
Moreover, if substituting the improved controller (17) with
the update laws (18) and (19) into V̇2 , then it can be straight-
forwardly obtained
h i
V̇2 = sT u − F̄f − D(q)v̇ d + D(q)Ωsigβ (ė)
˙
+ tr (W̃ T J −1 Ŵ )
h i
= sT −Kw s − Kv sgn(s) + F̄ˆf − F̄f
˙
+ tr (W̃ T J −1 Ŵ )
= − sT Kw s − sT Kv sgn(s)
˙
+ tr (W̃ T h(x)sT + W̃ T J −1 Ŵ )
= − sT Kw s − sT Kv sgn(s). (22)
Obviously, V̇2 < 0. By Lyapunov stability theorem, all
signals of the closed-loop system are bounded and the tracking
errors will converge to a compact set within a finite time.
system with proposed controller can be proven readily and
here the proof procedures are omitted for simplicity.
It should be mentioned that finite time convergence of
TSMC is merely demonstrated on the sliding mode manifold,
that is, the time of entering the sliding surface cannot be man-
aged such that the convergence time of the whole closed-loop
tracking system is unable to be regulated explicitly. However,
this drawback cannot affect the application of TSMC, since it
makes it possible to arbitrarily adjust the convergence time.
From this perspective, it is sufficient for the performance-
oriented control of WMRs with uncertain ground friction in
this case by selecting appropriate design parameters.
YUE et al.: NEURAL NETWORK BASED TERMINAL SLIDING MODE CONTROL FOR WMRS AFFECTED BY · · · 503

IV. N UMERICAL S IMULATION exhibits the tracking curves with compensation. As shown in
For verifying the efficient and effective properties of the Fig. 4 (a) in the early stages, with no compensation of the
proposed controllers for the WMRs with the uncertain ground ground friction, the WMR can track the desired trajectory as
friction in addition to the slippage effect, the numerical simu- well, despite the existence of some tracking errors; however
lation is performed in this section. Suppose that the physical when the friction parameters are abruptly increased, the ground
parameters of a WMR are as follows: m = 3, R = 0.25, friction severely impacts the tracking performance, leading to
d = 0.1, r = 0.3, I = 5; besides, the design parameters deviation from the desired trajectory from beginning to end.
of controller (17)−(19) can be chosen as follows: Kw = In contrast, as illustrated in Fig. 4 (b), if the compensation
diag{[20 20]}, Kv = diag{[20 20]}, Ω = diag{[0.5 0.5]}, procedure is applied in the controller, WMR will return to
β = diag{[0.5 0.5]}. Here a circular reference trajectory is the desired trajectory after adjusting within a short time,
hypothesized to illustrate the control performance with the and afterwards a satisfactory trajectory tracking performance
desired longitudinal and rotational velocities as υr = 1 m/s is acquired. Also, for achieving shorter adjusting time, the
and ωr = 0.2 rad/s, respectively. In the following the desired design parameters, e.g., Kw and Kv , can be regulated to
trajectory given by earth-fixed frame can be computed by xr appropriate values. The simulation results of tracking circular
= κ cos(ωr t), yr = κ sin(ωr t) and θr = ωr t where κ = 5 trajectory are illustrated in Fig. 4, from overall viewpoint,
is the radius of circular reference trajectory. Also, the initial suggest that the proposed control system with ground friction
errors for x, y, θ are supposed to be ex (0) = −0.35, ey (0) = compensation mechanism will improve the trajectory tracking
0.1, eθ (0) = π/12, respectively. In terms of the RBF neural performance for WMR obviously.
network, the related parameters are given as b = 10 and cn =
[−1.5 −1 − 0.5 0 0.5 1 1.5; −1.5 − 1 − 0.5 0 0.5 1 1.5]; the
design parameters of neural network weights are J1 = 2500·
I7×7 , J2 = 500 · I7×7 and every initial element’s neural
network weights is set as 0.1.
Particularly, as far as the ground friction is concerned which
is also the significant contribution of this study, the simulated
time is separated into a few cases to demonstrate various
situations of the friction so as to verify the effective and
efficient properties of the proposed estimated algorithm and
system controllers, as follows:
1) 0≤t<5
(
k1 = 1, k2 = 0.8, k3 = 0.6, k4 = 0.9
k5 = 0.7, k6 = 0.5, s = 0

2) 5 ≤ t < 10
(
k1 = 2, k2 = 1.8, k3 = 1.6, k4 = 1.9
k5 = 1.7, k6 = 1.5, s = 0

3) 10 ≤ t < 20


 k = 2, k2 = 1.8, k3 = 1.6, k4 = 1.9
 1
k5 = 1.7, k6 = 1.5, C1 = 1.2, C2 = 25
C = 0.5, s = rω − υ .

 3
max(rω, υ)
From the three cases, it comes to light that slippage effect
merely takes place before t = 10 s, and during this period,
every friction parameter abruptly increases after t = 5 s, by
which the robustness property to overcome the sudden changes
of parameters is validated, as demonstrated in Cases 1) and Fig. 4. Comparison of tracking responses with or without compensation.
2). After t = 10 s, as shown in Case 3) and the parameter
assignment, the slippage is determined by the mechanism of Besides, the useful control approach is based on TSMC by
the formula and then the ground friction becomes much more which the terminal time of the convergence can be governed
complex compared with the previous time. according to the required tracking performance. In order to
The time responses of the desired trajectory and the true illustrate this point, take the tracking process of longitudinal
path of WMR given in the earth-fixed frame are plotted velocity for WMRs, for example, as shown in Fig. 5. For
in Fig. 4, where Fig. 4 (a) describes the trajectory tracking validating the effectiveness of the TSMC, the comparison
process without ground friction compensation and Fig. 4 (b) with the common sliding mode control (SMC) whose sliding
504 IEEE/CAA JOURNAL OF AUTOMATICA SINICA, VOL. 4, NO. 3, JULY 2017

manifold can be defined as s1 = e1 + σ1 ė1 is performed. The
simulated results indicate that the terminal time for TSMC
is about 2 s, but the convergence time of SMC exceeds 6.5 s,
which means that the convergence time with TSMC is reduced
by 70 %. Also, the formulation of the convergence time shows
that the terminal time is closely related to the original errors of
the tracking system, thus it holds that ė1 (0) = υd (0) − υ(0) =
υr cos eθ (0) + λ1 ex (0) − υ(0) = 0.26 m/s where υ(0) = 0 in
this case. Therefore, the explicit terminal time of TSMC can
be computed as tυ = |ė1 (0)|1−β1 /[σ1 (1 − β1 )] = 2.04 s.
around t = 5 s yield that the identification will become stable
again within 1 s, thereby illustrating the robustness against
parameter variation; and at about t = 10 s, the convergence
within 2 s demonstrates the estimated algorithm provides the
control system with robustness to reject the slippage effect.
These simulation results also reflect the adaptability of the
presented control approach with the aid of RBF neural net-
work, which makes the closed-loop control system have much
better self-learning characteristic.

Fig. 5. Terminal time of TSMC and SMC.

Fig. 6 demonstrates the time responses of the robot veloc-

ity for further illustrating the tracking performance, where
Fig. 6 (a) shows the tracking process without ground friction
compensation while Fig. 6 (b) describes the one with compen-
sation. On the level of the velocity tracking, the comparison
results distinctly confirm the powerful compensation effects
with the RBF neural network technique: provided that there
has been no compensation before 10 s, the longitudinal and
rotational velocities can be tracked with a little tracking
errors, illustrating the robustness of the closed-loop system to
overcome the initial errors and parameter mutation; however
this robustness property will deteriorate seriously with the
introducing of slippage effect, specially showing that the sta-
bilization errors will never converge to the compact set. On the
contrary, Fig. 6 (b) displays much better performance including
Fig. 6. Time responses of velocity tracking with or without compensation.
the shorter convergence time and smaller steady-state error,
especially when the slippage takes place and the RBF neural
network compensation is implemented in the following. The
above comparison and analysis further indicate that the control
system with compensation schemes can significantly improve
the trajectory tracking performance which is also feasible and
effective for WMR application in practice.
In addition, in order to exhibit the approximation capability
of the RBF neural network, the identification responses of
the ground friction are plotted in Fig. 7, in which Ff 1 is
related to longitudinal velocity while Ff 2 is associated with
the rotational velocity. Besides, as seen in the diagrams of
partial enlargement, one can observe elastic fluctuation at three
positions: the fact that both Ff 1 and Ff 2 converge to a required
boundedness within 2 s from the start time, which means the
estimation is robust to overcome the initial errors; the results at Fig. 7. Ground friction estimation for Ff 1 and Ff 2 .
YUE et al.: NEURAL NETWORK BASED TERMINAL SLIDING MODE CONTROL FOR WMRS AFFECTED BY · · ·
Furthermore, another case is assumed to further exhibit the
identification capability with the compensation mechanism of
RBF neural network, that is, after t = 20 s, the slip rate is
supposed to change as a time-varying function, i.e., 0.5 +
0.5 sin t. In this case, the slip rate is forced to appear as
periodical variation instead of the one in Case 3) that will
converge to a stable value when velocities turn into con-
vergence. Under these hypotheses, the time responses of the
desired velocity and estimation are not smooth and steady as
previously mentioned. As shown in Fig. 8 and their diagrams
of partial enlargement, apart from t = 20 s, the periodical
estimations are observed as time goes on, and the obvious
oscillations for both velocity regulation are constrained within
2 s, which has the same periodicity as the slip rate.
Fig. 8. Time responses of robot velocity with periodical slip rate.
Fig. 9 describes the time responses of the estimation for
the ground friction with time-varying slip rate, where it tells
that both of frictions along the longitudinal and rotational
direction appear with periodical variation. From the whole
estimation process, the identification agrees well with the
true values, even although there exists some chattering after
a short period at t = 20 s as illustrated in the diagram of
partial enlargement. The numerical results strongly verify the
powerful approximation capability of RBF neural network,
by which both chattering reduction and smaller steady-error
performance can be achieved simultaneously.
Fig. 9. Dynamic slippage effect compensation.
505
To sum up, from the numerical simulation results, the
presented closed-loop control system with the ground friction
compensation by RBF neural network is feasible and efficient,
by which WMR can track the desired trajectory with a higher
performance.
V. CONCLUSION
One contribution of this paper lies in the presenting of
an augmented ground friction with consideration of slippage
effect. With the aid of this friction model, the traditional
friction effects associated with the mobile platform velocity
and the unavoidable slipping behavior related to the slip
rate are considered together which will make this augmented
friction much more suitable for the practical implementation,
especially on the low adhesion terrain. Another contribution
attributes to the presented estimation approach using RBF
neural network, by which a good estimation effect is achieved
for the multi-parameter friction model, in addition to an
adaptive terminal sliding mode control (TSMC) to make the
tracking errors of wheeled mobile robot (WMR) possess finite
time convergence performance. The comparison studies with
or without RBF neural network compensation strongly demon-
strate the significant role of the proposed control schemes,
and meanwhile the considered cases with numerous friction
conditions further validate the feasibility and effectiveness of
the control strategy.
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Ming Yue received the B.S. degree in mechanical
engineering from Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou,
China, in 1998. He received the M.S. and Ph.D.
degrees in mechatronics engineering from Harbin
Institute of Technology, Harbin, China, in 2004 and
2008, respectively. He was a visiting scholar with
Aerospace Engineering, the University of Michigan
during July 2013 to August 2014. Since July 2008,
he has been with Dalian University of Technology,
Dalian, China, where he is currently an associate
professor with the Department of Automotive Engi-
neering. His research interests include control approaches, such as adaptive
control, sliding mode control, model predictive control, and so on, with
application to wheeled mobile robots and intelligent vehicles.
Linjiu Wang received the B.S. degree in mecha-
tronic and automobile engineering from Yantai Uni-
versity, Yantai, China, in 2012. Since September
2013, he proceeded for M.S. degree in the Depart-
ment of Automotive Engineering, Dalian University
of Technology, Dalian, China. His research interests
include dynamic modeling and sliding mode control
for wheeled mobile robot.
Teng Ma received the B.S. degree in automobile en-
gineering from Liaoning University of Technology,
Jinzhou, China, in 2011. Since September 2014, he
proceeded for the M.S. degree in the Department
of Automotive Engineering, Dalian University of
Technology, Dalian, China. His research interests
include adaptive and robust control with application
to intelligent vehicles.