Centralized Control for an Heterogeneous Line Formation Using Virtual Structure Approach

Abstract

This work proposes a control structure to guide a formation of two mobile robots. Such a formation includes an unmanned ground vehicle (a differential drive wheeled mobile robot) and an unmanned aerial vehicle (a quadrotor), thus characterizing a heterogeneous formation. The strategy adopted corresponds to consider the whole formation as a single virtual structure, which corresponds to a line formation in the 3D space. The formation is characterized and the proposed control law is presented. Some results of simulated experiments considering the proposed control system and the line formation are also presented and discussed, which validate the proposed control system.