Trajectory Tracking, Pose Regulation and Adaptive Formation Control of a Group of Nonholonomic Mobile Robots

In this paper the formation and trajectory tracking control problem for multi-agent systems is presented. Initially, a control strategy for a group of holonomic robots is proposed. The proposed control is extended to the nonholonomic case. The control scheme is based on potential functions which make possible the design of decentralized formation control scheme while avoiding agents collisions. The trajectory tracking is achieved defining leaders which attract the formation to a desired trajectory. Furthermore, if at least two leaders are defined, the formation orientation tends to a desired pose (for the planar case). Assuming that the communication graph is always connected, a stability analysis using Lyapunov theory ensures the minimization of the potential function and the trajectory tracking. The control strategies are verified by simulation.