Angle-Constrained Adaptive Formation Control With Prescribed Performance for Multiple Nonholonomic Mobile Robots
Kun Li, Xu Fang, Kai Zhao, Yongduan Song
Abstract
In contrast with most existing formation control schemes, the angle-constrained formation enjoys the highest degree of freedom and is favorable for practical applications. In this article, we propose the angle-constrained-based adaptive formation shape and maneuvering control for uncertain multiple nonholonomic mobile robots, respectively. In the first strategy, the robots are controlled to form a predefined geometric pattern, while the second strategy focuses on maintaining a specific formation during collective maneuvers to support the mobile robots in their tasks (such as obstacle avoidance, area coverage, and escorting). It is worth noting that, by constructing a global performance function, the developed technique is uniform with respect to the initial states, making the control algorithm more user-friendly in practice. Furthermore, compared to the stress-matrix-based maneuver approach, the proposed method only needs a smaller number of leaders and followers’ neighbors, which can reduce the sensing links and computational cost. The experimental results are presented to verify the theoretical findings.