Distributed formation control of nonholonomic mobile robots without global position measurements

• Published in: Automatica (Oxford) Vol. 49; no. 2; pp. 592 - 600
• Main Authors: Liu, Tengfei, Jiang, Zhong-Ping
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Kidlington Elsevier Ltd 01.02.2013; Elsevier
• Subjects: Applied sciences; Computer science; control theory; systems; Computer systems and distributed systems. User interface; Control system synthesis; Control theory. Systems; Controllers; Distributed nonlinear control; Error analysis; Errors; Exact sciences and technology; Formation control; Input-to-output stability (IOS); Mobile robots; Nonlinearity; Position measurement; Robot control; Robotics; Robots; Small-gain; Software; Trees; Formation control; Input-to-output stability (IOS); Distributed nonlinear control; Mobile robots; Small-gain; Leadership; Wheel; Input-output stability; Tree structured method; Moving robot; Non linear control; Control synthesis; Non holonomic system; Tree structure; Robotics; Robust control; Distributed control; Position measurement; Mobile agent; Formation; Measurement error
• ISSN: 0005-1098; 1873-2836
• DOI: 10.1016/j.automatica.2012.11.031

This paper proposes a new class of distributed nonlinear controllers for leader-following formation control of unicycle robots without global position measurements. Nonlinear small-gain design methods are used to deal with the problem caused by the nonholonomic constraint of the unicycle robot and yield simple conditions for practical implementation. With the proposed distributed controllers, the formation control objective can be achieved without assuming any tree sensing structures. More interestingly, the distributed controller is robust to position measurement errors and the linear velocities of the robots can be restricted to specific bounded ranges.