Formation control of nonholonomic wheeled mobile robots via fuzzy fractional-order integral sliding mode control

This paper presents a robust formation control scheme for a team of nonholonomic wheeled mobile robots. First, the formation kinematic controller is introduced according to the leader-following strategy, then by employing the dynamic model of the robots, a combination of fractional calculus theories and integral sliding mode control is adopted to provide a robust dynamic control laws for every follower robots to track the leader and accomplish the required formation pattern even in the presence of external disturbances and model uncertainties. Furthermore, the chattering phenomenon is mitigated using a fuzzy logic control. Then, by using the Lyapunov theory, the proposed control scheme's convergence and stability are demonstrated. Finally, a comparative study is conducted to evaluate the performance of the suggested control strategy.