This paper presents a receding horizon control design for a robot subject to stochastic uncertainty, moving in a constrained environment. Instead of minimizing the expectation of a cost functional while ensuring satisfaction of probabilistic state constraints, we propose a two-stage solution where the path that minimizes the cost functional is planned deterministically, and a local stochastic optimal controller with exit constraints ensures satisfaction of probabilistic state constraints while following the planned path. This control design strategy ensures boundedness of errors around the reference path and collision-free convergence to the goal with probability one under the assumption of unbounded inputs. We show that explicit expressions for the control law are possible for certain cases. We provide simulation results for a point robot moving in a constrained two-dimensional environment under Brownian noise. The method can be extended to systems with bounded inputs, if a small nonzero probability of failure can be accepted.

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Miniature autonomous systems are being developed under ARL's Micro Autonomous Systems and Technology (MAST). These systems can only be fitted with a small-size processor, and their motion behavior is inherently uncertain due to manufacturing and platform-ground interactions. One way to capture this uncertainty is through a stochastic model. This paper deals with stochastic motion control design and implementation for MASTspecific eight-legged miniature crawling robots, which have been kinematically modeled as systems exhibiting the behavior of a Dubin's car with stochastic noise. The control design takes the form of stochastic receding horizon control, and is implemented on a Gumstix Overo Fire COM with 720 MHz processor and 512 MB RAM, weighing 5.5 g. The experimental results show the effectiveness of this control law for miniature autonomous systems perturbed by stochastic noise.

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