Formation Control and Collision Avoidance of Nonholonomic Mobile Robots

Abstract

In this paper, the formation control and collision avoidance problem is investigated for nonholonomic mobile robots. To avoid collisions, an improved adaptive artificial potential field (IAAPF) is designed for obstacles and robots. Firstly, an repulsive potential function is considered to the formation kinematic modeling for collision avoidance. To handle the uncertain nonlinearities of the closed-loop error system, an error-based extended state observer is designed. Secondly, based on estimations and repulsive forces, a dis-tributed formation controller with an adaptive repulsive potential gain is proposed for collision avoidance. Finally, stability analysis of the closed-loop system is provided by using the Lyapunov stability theory and effectiveness of the proposed method is demonstrated by experiments.