Adaptive generation of desired velocity field for leader-follower type cooperative mobile robots with decentralized PVFC

We propose an adaptive generation method of desired velocity field for leader-follower type cooperative mobile robots with decentralized passive velocity field control (PVFC) which is a decentralized control algorithm of multiple robots handling a common object in coordination. The proposed control method for cooperative mobile robots is constructed by extending the PVFC. This research is different from the previous work in which a common desired velocity field for cooperative PVFC and all cooperative mobile robots was only following the same desired velocity field using the proposed method supervisor can easily specify the behavior of the mobile robots. The stability and boundedness of the resultant system with the proposed control algorithm is also guaranteed. Finally, the proposed control algorithm is examined by computer simulations for cooperative tasks with two mobile robots, and the results illustrate the validity of the proposed control algorithm.