Cooperative control for formations of mobile robots under the nonholonomic constraints

This paper is concerned with cooperative control problems in formation of mobile robot under the nonholonomic constraints, which means certain geometrical constraints are imposed on multiple mobile robots throughout their travel. For this purpose, a new method of motion control for formations is presented, which is based on the piecewise smooth dynamic formation framework. In addition, the quality of formation control can be weighted by the error matrixes of formation offset distance and spacing distance. Finally, the kinematics rules are developed to regulate and maintain the formation shape while the group as a whole movement system. Simulation results illustrated the application of these ideas and demonstrate the validity of the proposed framework for a group of robots.