On the control of a leader-follower formation of nonholonomic mobile robots

This paper deals with leader-follower formations of nonholonomic mobile robots. Formalizing the problem in a geometric framework, it is proposed a controller that is alternative to those existing in the literature. It is shown that the geometry of the formation imposes a bound on the maximum admissible curvature of leader trajectory. A peculiar characteristic of the proposed strategy is that the position of the followers is not fixed with respect to the leader reference frame but varies in suitable cones. The formation geometry adapts to the followers dynamics and this allows lower control effort with respect to other approaches based on rigid formations.