Tracked mobile robots in the 20 kg size class are under development for applications in urban reconnaissance. For efficient deployment, it is desirable for teams of robots to be able to automatically execute path following behaviors, with one or more followers tracking the path taken by a leader. The key challenges to enabling such a capability are (1) to develop sensor packages for such small ...

This paper considers the path following of unmanned helicopters based on dynamic optimization. We assume that the helicopter is equipped with a flight control system which provides an approximation of its closed-loop dynamics. The task at hand is to derive inputs for this flight control system in order to track a geometrically specified path. A concise problem formulation and a discussion of an...

This paper addresses the problem of on-line path following for a car working in unstructured outdoor environments. The partially known map of the environment is updated and expanded in real time by a Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) algorithm. This information is used to implement global path planning. A cost graph is initially constructed followed by a search to find the near-optim...