A robust dynamic leader-follower formation control with active obstacle avoidance

Abstract

This paper presents a novel dynamic formation control strategy for multiple nonholonomic mobile robots. The main idea is converting the leader-follower formation control problem to an equivalent tracking control problem for follower robot based on the states of the relative motion between the robots. Then, the dynamic model of robots is used in formation. A formation controller, consisting of a feedback linearization part and a sliding mode compensator, is designed to stabilize the overall system. The proposed controller generates the commanded torques for the follower robot and makes the formation control system robust to the effect of unknown bounded disturbances in dynamic modeling. Furthermore, on active obstacle avoidance is presented by considering the obstacle as a virtual leader in our proposed model. Simulation results are presented to verify the performance of the proposed scheme.