Abstract
Warehouse logistics systems increasingly require rapid and efficient material transfer. Wheeled mobile robots (WMRs), as flexible automated handling equipment, are being widely adopted for warehouse transport. This paper addresses the trajectory-tracking problem of a WMR subject to external disturbances in warehouse handling scenarios and proposes an adaptive trajectory tracking control method with a convergence time that can be specified in advance. A Lyapunov-based sufficient condition is presented to support the explicit design of the convergence-time parameter. An intermediate variable is introduced into the kinematic error system of a differential-drive WMR, and lateral-error feedback is incorporated into the virtual velocity control law. The proposed design drives the longitudinal position error and heading error into a computable bounded set within a predefined time while maintaining a bounded lateral error. With the left and right wheel torques as servo inputs, an adaptive control law is designed from a first-order WMR velocity dynamics model. By adaptively compensating for the equivalent external disturbances caused by friction, ground irregularities, and related effects online, the actual linear and angular velocities rapidly track their virtual commands. It is further shown that the velocity-tracking error enters and remains in a bounded set within a predefined time, which establishes practical predefined-time stability of the complete closed-loop system. Finally, comparative numerical simulations and hardware experiments are conducted. The results show that the proposed method provides favorable trajectory-tracking accuracy and convergence speed, thereby supporting rapid motion and stable servo operation of warehouse-handling WMRs.