Nonlinear controllability of leader-follower formation for multi-robots

Abstract

The controllability of the cascade leader-follower formation system for multi-robots is studied based on the controllability rank condition for general nonlinear system. For the cascade robot formation system, bearing-only unscented Kalman filter (UKF) is used for the state estimation of the leader and the follower robots at all levels, which enables the real-time movement control of the follower robots via input-output feedback control. Simulation results prove the controllability of the cascade robot formation system.