Distributed fixed-time consensus-based formation tracking for multiple nonholonomic wheeled mobile robots under directed topology

This paper investigates the distributed fixed-time consensus-based formation tracking problems for multiple nonholonomic wheeled mobile robots under a directed interaction topology. The distributed fixed-time consensus-based controllers under the directed interaction topology are proposed for the multiple wheeled mobile robots with nonholonomic constraints, which can guarantee the group of robots converge to a predefined formation pattern with its centroid moving along the predefined reference trajectory in a fixed time. The fixed-time formation tracking can be achieved within a fixed settling time, which is independent of the initial states of the whole system. Moreover, the conditions of formation stability control are analysed by utilising graph and Lyapunov stability theories. Finally, the feasibility of the proposed distributed controllers is verified by numerical simulation.