Different kinematic controllers stabilizing nonholonomic mobile manipulators of (nh, nh) type about desired configuration

In the paper, a problem of selection of kinematic control algorithm for nonholonomic manipulator has been considered. For a nonholonomic manipulating arm, two kinematic algorithms - Astolfi algorithm (working in closed-loop) and Nakamura, Chung and Sordalen algorithm (working in open loop of control) have been compared. Simulation results have shown that influence of the dynamics on the behavior of mobile manipulator of (nh, nh) type is huge. It means that only kinematic control algorithms using feedback in the control loop are sufficiently robust to apply them in practical applications. Then, for the nonholonomic wheeled mobile platform, Astolfi algorithm, which belongs to discontinuous class of kinematic algorithms, has also been compared to a discontinuous algorithm proposed by Zhang & Hirschorn.