Adaptive formation control of nonholonomic mobile robots for autonomous following in front of the leader

Abstract

This paper addresses the control of an autonomous leader-follower formation of nonholonomic mobile robots in a specific case, when the following robot is moving ahead of the leading robot. Using a look-ahead approach, first, a kinematic model of the leader-follower formation in error coordinates is developed. A nonlinear feedback control is design using only information for the relative position and orientation between the robots. An adaptive control is proposed to deal with the unknown leader linear and angular velocities, which are not available for the feedback control design. Using Lyapunov stability theory, asymptotic stability property of the closed-loop system is established. The performance of the proposed adaptive leader-following formation controller is illustrated through numerical simulations.