Differential Flatness Theory in Mobile Robotics and Autonomous Vehicles

Abstract

The chapter analyzes the use of nonlinear filtering and control methods based on differential flatness theory in steering control, localization and autonomous navigation of land vehicles, unmanned surface vessels and unmanned aerial vehicles. It is shown that through the application of differential flatness theory one can obtain solution for the following non-trivial problems: state estimation-based control of autonomous vehicles, state estimation-based control of cooperating vehicles, distributed fault diagnosis for autonomous vehicles, velocity control of 4-wheel autonomous vehicles under model uncertainties and external disturbances, active control of vehicle suspensions, state estimation-based control unmanned aerial vehicles of the quadrotor type, state estimation-based control of unmanned surface vessels of the hovercraft type.