A lagrangian formulation of nonholonomic path following
We address the problem of following an unknown planar contour with a nonholonomic vehicle based on visual feedback. The control task is to keep a point of the vehicle as close as possible to the contour for a choice of norm. A camera mounted on-board the vehicle provides measurements of the contour. We formulate the problem and compute the control law in a moving reference frame modeling the evolution of the contour as seen by an observer sitting on the vehicle. The result is an on-line path planning strategy and a predictive control law which leads the vehicle to land softly on the unknown curve. Depending on the choice of the tracking criterion, the controller can exhibit non-trivial behaviors including automatic maneuvering.