Open AccessGlobally convergent leaderless formation control for unicycle‐type mobile robots
Author(s) -
He Xiaodong,
Geng Zhiyong
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
iet control theory and applications
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.059
H-Index - 108
eISSN - 1751-8652
pISSN - 1751-8644
DOI - 10.1049/iet-cta.2019.1354
Subject(s) - mobile robot , robot , control theory (sociology) , controller (irrigation) , kinematics , computer science , holonomic , holonomic constraints , robot control , constraint (computer aided design) , control (management) , control engineering , engineering , artificial intelligence , mechanical engineering , physics , classical mechanics , agronomy , biology
This study investigates the leaderless formation control problem for unicycle‐type mobile robots and designs a formation controller for a two‐robot system. The proposed control law is globally effective, namely making mobile robots converge to the formation from all kinds of initial conditions. The kinematic model of mobile robots is directly established on the special Euclidean group, and the mobile robot is merely required to obtain the relative configuration (i.e. position and orientation) in its own body‐fixed frame. The approach for the formation problem is to design a virtual system for each mobile robot, which contains the desired formation pattern, so that the formation problem for mobile robots is converted into the consensus problem for virtual systems. Furthermore, the non‐holonomic constraint for the virtual systems is derived for the first time, which is explained from the viewpoint of geometric control. In addition, the authors clarify the physical meaning of the multiple control gains, which can guarantee excellent robot behaviour by appropriate selection.