Formation tracking control and formation stabilization control of multiple nonholonomic mobile robots

Formation tracking control problem and formation stabilization problem for multiple nonholonomic mobile robots are considered in this paper. Through introducing a virtual nonholonomic robot, the formation control problem is transformed into a tracking problem between the virtual robot and the leader. According to different motions of the leader robot, formation tracking and formation stabilization problem can be manipulated in a same framework. Theories from nonautonomous cascaded systems are involved to simplify the controller synthesis after carefully studying the structure of the error dynamics systems and global exponential controllers are obtained for these control problems in the end. Simulation results using Matlab illustrated the effectiveness of solving the formation control problems using methodologies presented in this paper.