Leader-follower formation control of multi-robot without communication links

Abstract

This paper addresses the leader-follower formation control problem for multi-robot without communication links. In order to effectively cope with the inherent nonlinearity of the problem itself, the relative motion between the leader and the follower is modelled as a linear state-space equation in line-of-sight (LOS) frame. Provided that the relative kinematic information in LOS frame is measured by our gimballed seeker mounted on the follower robot, the coordination problem is resolved by applying the linear quadratic servo control theory for the derived relative motion model. The proposed approach might be an attractive choice because it does not require an expensive sensors or communication links. Simulation results show that our method provides better performance than the existing nonlinear formation controllers especially in the presence of un-modelled wheel actuator dynamics of the robot.