This work focus on the application of model-based predictive control (MPC) to the trajectory tracking problem of nonholonomic wheeled mobile robots (WMR). The main motivation of the use of MPC in this case relies on its ability in considering, in a straightforward way, control and state constraints that naturally arise in practical problems. Furthermore, MPC techniques consider an explicit performance criterion to be minimized during the computation of the control law. The trajectory tracking

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... oblem is solved using two approaches: (1) nonlinear MPC and (2) linear MPC. Simulation results are provided in order to show the effectiveness of both schemes. Considerations regarding the computational effort of the MPC are developed with the purpose of analyzing the real-time implementation viability of the proposed techniques.