Motion Planning and control of mobile vehicles with nonholonomic constraints are in their infancy. A systematic approach for modeling and base; motion control of a mobile vehicle is presented. A nonlinear coordinate transformation that takes into account the complete dynamics with nonholonomic constraints is used in order to obtain a linear system in space coordinates. An input-output feedback linearization inner loop is subsequently designed to transform this system into a linear-point mass system in the coordinates corresponding to the control objectives. A rigorous yet simple approach to motion planning through optimization techniques is presented for these mobile vehicles. The resulting Cartesian trajectory generated from the motion planning algorithm is employed as the reference trajectory in the outer loop, which is designed based on a Lyapunov function candidate. The net result is a base motion controller that gives capabilities to these mobile vehicles not only for tracking a Cartesian trajectory but also to achieve a desired final orientation (docking angle).
