T. Tripathy and A. Sinha, Unicycle With Only Range Input: An Array of Patterns, IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, vol. 63, no. 5, pp. 1300-1312, DOI: 10.1109/TAC.2017.2736940.
The objective of this paper is to generate planar patterns using an autonomous agent modeled as a unicycle. The patterns are generated about a stationary point referred to as the target. To achieve the same, the paper proposes a family of control inputs that are continuous functions of range, which is the distance between the unicycle and the target. The paper studies in detail a characterization of the resulting trajectories, which are a plethora of patterns of parametric curves (circles, spirals, epicyclic curves like hypotrochoids) and more. These appealing patterns find applications in exploration, coverage, land mine detection, etc., where the target represents any point of interest like a landmark or a beacon. The paper also investigates the necessary conditions on the control laws in order to generate patterns of desired shapes and bounds. Furthermore, to generate desired patterns with arbitrary initial conditions, a switching strategy is proposed which is illustrated using an algorithm. The paper presents a series of simulations of appealing patterns generated using the proposed control laws.