3-D Velocity Regulation for Nonholonomic Source Seeking Without Position Measurement

TL;DR

This paper introduces a velocity regulation strategy for 3D nonholonomic source seeking without position data, enabling the vehicle to slow down near the source and improve convergence.

Contribution

It proposes a novel velocity regulation approach that ensures the vehicle slows near the source, with simplified controllers and proven local exponential convergence.

Findings

Vehicle slows down near the source as intended.

Controllers for angular velocities are simplified.

Theoretical convergence is validated through simulations.

Abstract

We consider a three-dimensional problem of steering a nonholonomic vehicle to seek an unknown source of a spatially distributed signal field without any position measurement. In the literature, there exists an extremum seeking-based strategy under a constant forward velocity and tunable pitch and yaw velocities. Obviously, the vehicle with a constant forward velocity may exhibit certain overshoots in the seeking process and can not slow down even it approaches the source. To resolve this undesired behavior, this paper proposes a regulation strategy for the forward velocity along with the pitch and yaw velocities. Under such a strategy, the vehicle slows down near the source and stays within a small area as if it comes to a full stop, and controllers for angular velocities become succinct. We prove the local exponential convergence via the averaging technique. Finally, the theoretical results are illustrated with simulations.