Distributed tracking control of multiple nonholonomic mobile agents with input delay

This paper considers the distributed control problem of nonholonomic mobile agents with input delay to track a target. In contrast to the existing works in which some controllers have been designed for ideal conditions, the destructive factor of input delay is considered in the dynamics of the agents in this work. At first, a distributed controller is suggested for each agent to track the target in the absence of input delay. In this case, each nonholonomic mobile agent is divided into two subsystems and two terminal sliding mode controllers are designed for the two subsystems. Based on the proposed controllers, a switching control strategy is obtained to guarantee the finite time tracking control of nonholonomic mobile agents. Then, this controller is extended based on a future state estimator for tracking control in the presence of input delay. The stability analysis of distributed controllers and estimator is also provided. Simulation results illustrate the effectiveness of the suggested algorithms.