A symbolic-based motion control method for wheeled mobile robots is put forward in this paper. Wheeled mobile robots, which are characterized by the nonholonomic constraints, are particularly difficult to control since real environment may be full of obstacles. Traditional methods have to resort to analysis and design at the level of individual sensors and actuators. As a result, the richness of the set of mappings from sensor to actuator signals constitutes a great challenge in determining a suitable control law to steer the wheeled mobile robot. In view of those considerations, a symbolic-based control method is presented, in which control procedures have a natural, linguistic flavor. In this method, different control procedures can be generated from a finite set composed of symbols which correspond to different control actions. It is obvious that this method allows one to design feedback control laws at the level of strings and primitives, rather than at the level of sensors and actuators. Simulation results show that the proposed method is effective for the control of wheeled mobile robots. © 2009 IEEE.