Teleoperation of an unmanned car via robust adaptive backstepping control approach

This paper addresses the unilateral teleoperation of unmanned cars containing dynamic uncertainties in the vehicle model. A robust adaptive backstepping control algorithm is designed for the high-level control of the longitudinal velocity and the orientation of the vehicle. The car is modeled as a bicycle with four degrees of freedom (DoFs). Although the lateral skid of the vehicle is ignored (nonholonomic constraint on the rear wheels), its longitudinal slip is considered in the controller design. The adaptive controller is developed for treating both constant and time-varying unknown control parameters. The controller is made robust against the air drag force opposing the vehicle's motion. Globally uniformly ultimately boundedness of the tracking errors are guaranteed using the Lyapunov's theory. Simulation results verifies the effectiveness of our control framework.