Autonomous leader-follower formation control of non-holonomic wheeled mobile robots by incremental path planning and sliding mode augmented tracking control

This paper presents a novel robust and autonomous formation control scheme for wheeled mobile robots in the leader-follower formation control framework considering their non-holonomic constraints. In the proposed formation control scheme, the leader robot of the group plans its path of navigation autonomously in a cluttered environment by employing incremental path planning by modified artificial potential field. Then, the follower robots in the group plan their path in order to follow the leader robot by maintaining a particular formation using the separation-bearing (l − Ψ) control. Then the formation control problem has been transformed into a trajectory tracking control problem. The kinematic control component of the tracking controller provides the necessary velocity input for eliminating the non-holonomic constraints, whereas, the sliding mode augmented robust trajectory tracking control component minimises the effects of nonlinearities, model uncertainties, parameter variations, and disturbances. The effectiveness of the proposed control law has been established by simulation studies.