A receding horizon control strategy for constrained differential-drive robots moving in static unknown environments

In this paper, a reference tracking problem for wheeled differential-drive robots subject to obstacle avoidance requirements is considered. By resorting to feedback-linearization techniques, the differential-drive nonlinear dynamics is first recast as two simple integrators under state-dependent input constraints; then, an ad-hoc switching receding horizon controller is derived with the aim to efficiently handle time-varying constraints and non-convex obstacle-free regions. Effectiveness and benefits of such an approach are finally discussed by means of experimental results obtained using an E-puck2 differential-drive robot.