  Modeling and control strategies for a design of an autonomous three wheeled
mobile robot with front wheel steer is presented. Although, the three-wheel
vehicle design with front wheel steer is common in automotive vehicles used
often in public transport, but its advantages in navigation and localization of
autonomous vehicles is seldom utilized. We present the system model for such a
robotic vehicle. A PID controller for speed control is designed for the model
obtained and has been implemented in a digital control framework. The
trajectory control framework, which is a challenging task for such a
three-wheeled robot has also been presented in the paper. The derived system
model has been verified using experimental results obtained for the robot
vehicle design. Controller performance and robustness issues have also been
discussed briefly.
