Leader-Steered Rigid Formation Control With Visibility Maintenance for Multiple Nonholonomic Mobile Robots

Area of Science:

• Robotics and Control Systems
• Multi-Agent Systems
• Autonomous Navigation

Background:

• Traditional leader-follower models struggle with nonholonomic and field-of-view (FOV) constraints in multirobot systems.
• Maintaining both formation rigidity and inter-agent visibility is challenging under dynamic conditions.

Purpose of the Study:

• To introduce a novel framework for achieving leader-steered (L-S) rigid formations in multirobot systems.
• To address nonholonomic and field-of-view (FOV) constraints while ensuring visibility maintenance.
• To develop a control strategy that balances formation adjustments with visibility requirements.

Main Methods:

• Development of a virtual leader model based on topological and local agent connections.
• Implementation of a continuous and continuously differentiable switching function to manage visibility and formation adjustments.
• Design of a distributed control protocol and a distributed observer for system implementation.

Main Results:

• The framework successfully achieves leader-steered (L-S) rigid formations under nonholonomic and FOV constraints.
• Visibility is maintained between topologically connected vehicles throughout the formation maneuvers.
• The switching function effectively balances formation control with visibility requirements, even during high-curvature trajectories.

Conclusions:

• The proposed framework offers a robust solution for L-S rigid formations in constrained multirobot systems.
• The method demonstrates practical utility and effectiveness through numerical simulations and real-world experiments.
• This approach enhances the applicability of coordinated multirobot systems in complex environments.