Real-Time Energy-Optimal Moving Target Tracking by Holonomic Vehicle

Holonomic vehicles possess enhanced maneuverability over differential drive systems, which offers increased flexibility in narrow passages. This paper describes a real-time policy for generating an energy optimal path for tracking a moving object, by a four wheeled holonomic mobile robot. Artificial potential field has been employed as the discretetime path planner and a piecewise continuous optimal control has been devised for minimizing energy in each time segment. The necessary conditions for optimality has been found in the tradition of Pontryagin. An algorithm for online implementation has been proposed.