Inverse optimal design of the distributed consensus protocol for formation control of multiple mobile robots

This paper presents the inverse optimal design method of a nonlinear distributed consensus protocol for formation control of multiple mobile robots. Both dynamics and kinematics are considered in the protocol design. First, we propose a state transformation method to obtain a proper consensus model of a mobile robot. Then, the inverse optimal protocol is designed with respect to a meaningful cost function under the assumption of perfect angular velocity tracking. The assumption will be relaxed by extending the inverse optimal protocol using the backstepping and Lyapunov´s direct methods. The numerical simulation is carried out to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method.