Dynamic Formation Control for Car-like Mobile Robots

For the formation problem of the car-like mobile robots, a dynamic coordinated control algorithm for multiple robots is proposed. Firstly, a model of trajectory tracking system for the follower robot is established through the virtual robot, which is generated according to the desired formation parameters of the leader and follower robots. Then the robot's kinematics model is transformed into the chain form, and the Lyapunov function of the trajectory tracking system is constructed via the backstepping method. The trajectory tracking controller for the follower robot is obtained by making this Lyapunov function negative-definite. The formation control of the car-like mobile robots is realized in this way. A 3D simulation testbed is designed by the Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio 4 (MRDS4), and the effectiveness of the proposed method is demonstrated through 3 sets of experiments.