Leader-follower formation control using artificial potential functions: A kinematic approach

This paper presents a novel formation control technique of a group of differentially driven wheeled mobile robots employing artificial potential field based navigation and leader-follower formation control scheme. In the proposed method, the leader robot of the group determines its path of navigation by an artificial potential field and the other robots in the group follow the leader maintaining a particular formation employing the (l - ψ) control. As the leader robot navigates itself by artificial potential field it can easily avoid the collisions with the obstacles and can follow an optimal path while reaching to the goal position. The follower robots adapt their formation by suitably controlling the desired separation distance and the bearing angle. Thus, the original formation can be regained even if the formation is temporarily lost due to passage through narrow opening / path. Therefore, the overall formation control scheme results into a robust and adaptive formation control for a group autonomous differentially driven wheeled mobile robots. The effectiveness of the proposed formation control technique has been verified in simulation.