Bounded controllers for decentralized formation control of mobile robots with limited sensing

Abstract

This paper presents a constructive method to design bounded cooperative controllers that force a group of N mobile robots with limited sensing ranges to stabilize at a desired location, and guarantee no collisions between the robots. The control development is based on new general potential functions, which attain the minimum value when the desired formation is achieved, and are equal to infinity when a collision between any robots occurs. Smooth and p times differential jump functions are introduced and embedded into the potential functions to deal with the robot limited sensing ranges. Formation tracking is also considered.