Formation control of mobile robots using decentralized nonlinear model predictive control

This paper presents a distributed nonlinear model predictive controller (NMPC) for formation control of a group of omnidirectional mobile robots. In this approach the controllers are distributed to the agents, and the terms of coupling allow the use of fixed and time-varying formations. The path following problem is expressed through a dynamic model of the robot´s state errors, and the coordination problem is solved through adjustments in the robots´ speeds combined with the path update rate for each robot. Experimental results are provided to demonstrate the performance of the proposed control strategy using real and virtual robots.