A Leader-follower Formation Control Incorporated by Receding-horizon Scheme for Multiple Nonholonomic Mobile Robots in Network

This project aims to develop a receding-horizon leader-follower (RH-LF) control approach for addressing the formation problem of multiple nonholonomic mobile robots in networks. The proposed control framework has two levels. The first level is for generation of the desired robot postures based on the required leader-follower relationships, and the second level is for motion controls to drive robots’ formation tracking errors towards zero, with consideration of nonholonomic constraints of the robots. To improve the convergence rate of the tracking errors, a receding-horizon (RH) scheme is incorporated into the robot controller. With this new control approach, the orientation deviations between the leaders and the followers are explicitly controlled, and the formation problem when robots move back, which haven’t been solved by existing leader-follower approaches, can also be addressed successfully. Experimental studies will be finally performed on a group of mobile robots to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed network control framework for multi-robot formations.