Distributed consensus-based formation control for nonholonomic wheeled mobile robots using adaptive neural network

Formation control of nonholonomic mobile robots is considered in this paper and decentralized linear controllers based on cascade design are proposed for a group of nonholonomic mobile robots. By using the theory of cascaded systems and cooperative control of linear agents, multiple nonholonomic robots' formation control problem is converted into multi-linear time-varying systems' stabilization problem. Linear decentralized cooperative controllers are brought out for the formation control problem when the reference targets satisfy the condition of persistent excitation which has relaxed the requirements on reference trajectory than those given in previous papers.

Formation Control and Obstacle Avoidance for Multiple Mobile Robots

SUMMARYThis paper considers finite‐time formation control problem for a group of nonholonomic mobile robots. The desired formation trajectory is represented by a virtual dynamic leader whose states are available to only a subset of the followers and the followers have only local interaction. First of all, a continuous distributed finite‐time observer is proposed for each follower to estimate the leader's states in a finite time. Then, a continuous distributed cooperative finite‐time tracking control law is designed for each mobile robot. Rigorous proof shows that the group of mobile robots converge to the desired geometric formation pattern in finite time. At the same time, all the robots can track the desired formation trajectory in finite time. Simulation example illustrates the effectiveness of our method. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

This study aims to explore the tracking control challenge in a swarm of multiple nonholonomic wheeled mobile robots (NWMRs) by utilizing a distributed leader–follower strategy grounded in the cascade system theory. Firstly, the kinematic control law is developed for the leader by constructing a sliding surface based on the error tracking model with a virtual reference trajectory. Secondly, a communication topology with the desired formation pattern is modeled for the multiple robots by using the graph theory. Further, in the leader–follower NWMR system, each follower lacks direct access to the leader’s information. Therefore, a novel distributed-based controller by PD-based controller for the follower is developed, enabling each follower to obtain the leader’s information. Thirdly, for each case, we give a further analysis of the closed-loop system to guarantee uniform global asymptotic stability with the conditions based on the cascade system theory. Finally, the trajectory tracking performance of the proposed controllers for the NWMR system is illustrated through simulation results. The leader robot achieved a low RMSE of 1.6572 (Robot 1), indicating accurate trajectory tracking. Follower robots showed RMSEs of 2.6425 (Robot 2), 3.0132 (Robot 3), and 4.2132 (Robot 3), reflecting minor variations due to the distributed control strategy and local disturbances.

This paper presents a formation control of mobile robots with a large obstacle avoidance. The mobile robots considered in this paper have multiple sonars which are used for not only constructing formation but also avoiding obstacle. The novel modules overcoming the drawbacks of the previous navigation algorithm [6] are introduced to accomplish the obstacle avoidance and formation control. The effectiveness of the proposed techniques are demonstrated by an experiment using three mobile robots.

Finite-time tracking control of multiple nonholonomic mobile robots

A novel approach for formation control of differential-drive mobile robots is presented in this paper. The control design is done in the framework of functionally related systems. Functionally related systems are the systems that are ‘virtually’ interconnected. The term ‘virtually’ denotes the situation in which the states or outputs of otherwise separated systems are functionally related to each other. If a formation of mobile robots is analyzed, it can be considered as a group of functionally related systems. Therefore, formation control of the robots can be synthesized in the mentioned framework.

A constructive method is presented to design cooperative controllers that force a group of N mobile robots to achieve a particular formation in terms of shape and orientation while avoiding collisions between themselves. The control development is based on new local potential functions, which attain the minimum value when the desired formation is achieved, and are equal to infinity when a collision occurs. The proposed controller development is also extended to formation control of nonholonomic mobile robots.

This paper investigates an adaptive leader-follower formation control problem of multiple mobile robots in the presence of unknown skidding and slipping. First, we employ the concept of virtual robots to achieve the desired formation and derive the kinematics of the virtual leader and follower robots considering skidding and slipping effects. Then, we design an adaptive formation controller based on a two-dimensional error surface where the adaptive technique is used for compensating the unknown skidding and slipping effects that influence the follower robots. From Lyapunov stability theorem, we show that all errors of the closed-loop system are uniformly ultimately bounded, and thus the desired formation is successfully achieved regardless of the presence of unknown skidding and slipping effects. Simulation results are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed formation control scheme.

In this paper, asymptotically stable control laws are developed for leader---follower based formation control using backstepping in order to accommodate the dynamics of the robots and the formation. First, a kinematic controller is developed around control strategies for single mobile robots and the idea of virtual leaders. The virtual leader is replaced with a physical mobile robot leader, and an auxiliary velocity control law is developed in order to prove the global asymptotic stability of the followers which in turn allows the local asymptotic stability of the entire formation. A novel approach is taken in the development of the dynamical controller such that the torque control inputs for the follower robots include the dynamics of the follower robot as well as the dynamics of its leader, and two cases are considered--the case when the robot dynamics are known and the case when they are unknown. In the first case, a robust adaptive control term is utilized to account for unmodeled dynamics. For the latter, a robust adaptive term is augmented with a NN control law to achieve asymptotic tracking performance in contrast with most NN controllers where a bounded tracking error result is shown. Additionally, the NN approximation error is assumed to be a function of tracking errors instead of a constant upper bound, which is commonly found in the literature. The stability of the follower robots as well as the entire formation is demonstrated in each case using Lyapunov methods and numerical results are provided.

This paper investigates the distributed fixed-time consensus-based formation tracking problems for multiple nonholonomic wheeled mobile robots under a directed interaction topology. The distributed fixed-time consensus-based controllers under the directed interaction topology are proposed for the multiple wheeled mobile robots with nonholonomic constraints, which can guarantee the group of robots converge to a predefined formation pattern with its centroid moving along the predefined reference trajectory in a fixed time. The fixed-time formation tracking can be achieved within a fixed settling time, which is independent of the initial states of the whole system. Moreover, the conditions of formation stability control are analysed by utilising graph and Lyapunov stability theories. Finally, the feasibility of the proposed distributed controllers is verified by numerical simulation.

In this paper, we propose a new nonlinear cooperative steering control to solve the formation control problem for multiple mobile robots with nonholonomic constraints. By using a new contraction mapping method, it is rigorously proved that the proposed cooperative formation control is asymptotically stabilizing under the condition that the sensing/communication network among robots is sequentially complete. Simulation results are included to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed control.

This article investigates the circular formation control problem of multiple unicycle-type mobile robots under a directed sensor graph. The topology of the sensor graph among all robots is described by a directed graph containing a spanning tree, and the node denoting the center is only required to be globally reachable in the sensor graph. A dynamic control law is developed such that the multi-robot systems with speed constraint are able to globally converge to a circular formation prescribed by a stationary center, a radius, and a spacing configuration. Remarkably, the proposed control law does not rely on any communication, and only requires each robot to use local measurements with respect to its neighbors based on its local coordinate frame, which makes it feasible to implement this control law in a decentralized manner. The global asymptotic stability of the closed-loop multi-robot system is established by small-gain theorem of which the small-gain condition is guaranteed by a low gain parameter in the designed observer.

In this paper, a novel cooperative coevolution (CC)-based model predictive control (MPC) is proposed to deal with formation control problem. While conventional evolutionary algorithm (EA)-based MPC approaches cannot guarantee the stability, the proposed CC-based MPC guarantees the asymptotic stability regardless of the optimality of the solution that the CC-based algorithm generates with a small number of individuals. To guarantee the stability, a terminal state constraint is found, and then a repair algorithm is applied to all candidate solutions to meet the constraint. The cooperatively coevolving particle swarm optimization (CCPSO), most recently developed algorithm among CC-based EAs, is adopted and modified to fit into the formation control problem. Experiments are performed on a group of nonholonomic mobile robots to demonstrate the effectiveness of the CC-based MPC.

This paper addresses the robust formation control of non-holonomic mobile robots with homogeneous system architecture and decentralized control structure. Therefore, it was necessary the mathematical modeling of mobile robots, from which, the Separation-Bearing variant of Leader-Following control strategy was implemented. The stability proof were based on the Lyapunov theory. The sliding mode control (SMC) strategy was used in the controller design to make the control robust to the incidence of uncertainties and disturbances. The Fuzzy Adaptive Formation Control is designed to eliminate the previous bounding knowledge of these uncertainties and disturbances. The proposed control effectiveness is demonstrated by results obtained with simulations in Matlab/Simulink. The pure kinematic and kinematic with disturbances is also analyzed. The results shows the controllers effectiveness to formation of multi-robots systems to the eight-shaped trajectory.