Formation tracking of mobile robots based on locally measured relative positions with velocity saturation
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DOI:
https://doi.org/10.15625/0866-7136/23630Keywords:
formation maneuvering, input saturation, multiagent systems, mobile robot, nonlinear stability analysisAbstract
This work addresses the formation tracking of a team of multiple mobile robots subject to nonholonomic constraints and velocity saturation. A leader robot is used that follows a straight line with a constant speed. The other follower robots maintain the formation geometry by regulatingthe desired relative positions to neighboring robots. {The measurement graph of the system is directed and contains a spanning tree rooted at the leader}. Such a task is called formation tracking (or formation maneuvering in some works). The tracking controllers for the follower robots are designed to provide each robot’s reference forward speed and angular rate, \added{with} \replaced{their}{and their} heading angles being estimated based on the robots’ global positions. Asymptotic convergence to the target formation of the system is established. Simulation results and experimental results on formation tracking of mobile robots are provided to support the effectiveness of the proposed controller. A video of the experiment is provided in \url{https://youtu.be/aKNtx02GNHQ}.
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