Distributed Leader-follower Formation Control of Nonholonomic Mobile Robots

Abstract

This paper considers the problem of distributed leader-follower formation control for nonholonomic mobile robots only using local interactions among the robots. First, a distributed estimation strategy is presented for each follower robot to estimate the leader's state. Then the dynamic equations of the formation tracking errors are formulated and a distributed formation control scheme is designed, which yields globally uniformly ultimately bounded stability for the closed-loop systems without requiring persistent excitation conditions. Finally, a simulation example demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed approach.