Distributed Formation Control of Nonholonomic Vehicles Subject to Velocity Constraints

This paper considers a leader-follower formation control problem of nonholonomic vehicles of unicycle-type subject to velocity constraints. The velocity constraints of each vehicle are described by saturated angular velocity and bounded linear velocity lying between two positive constants. The communication topology of the networked multi-vehicle system is modeled by a directed graph. The designed control law is distributed in the sense that the controller of each follower vehicle only uses its own information and the information of its neighboring vehicles. It is shown that with the proposed control law, the leader-follower formation can be achieved without using absolute position measurements while the velocity constraints are satisfied. Finally, the simulation results of an example verify effectiveness of the proposed control law.