A Novel Virtual-Structure Formation Control Design for Mobile Robots with Obstacle Avoidance

Abstract

The cooperative motion of multiple mobile robots has attracted wide attention due to its advantages in military, marine and aerospace fields, and formation control has become a significant technology in the realization of these tasks. However, most of the existing formation control designs of mobile robots do not consider the practical obstacles in the environment, and the maintenance of both formation and trajectory tracking while confronting the obstacles is still a challenging issue. Therefore, in this paper, a virtual-structure-based formation control approach is designed with obstacle avoidance for a system with multiple mobile robots. The basic trajectory is generated for each robot in the group and parameterized to keep the group in formation. A trajectory generator is then established regarding the obstacles, where a potential function is designed to adjust the basic trajectory and replan the reference trajectory to achieve obstacle avoidance. Then, a novel design for the path parameter is proposed to improve the performance of the robot group when encountering obstacles. Finally, a tracking controller is designed to achieve good tracking performance for robots, and the guaranteed performance is achieved via the Lyapunov theorem. A comparative simulation with three sets is carried out, where an objective function Fobj is designed to evaluate the tracking performance in the presence of obstacles. Besides this, a real experiment is implemented to further verify the effectiveness. The simulation and experimental results verify the good formation and tracking performance of the proposed design for a system with multiple mobile robots with obstacle avoidance.

Fuzzy Integral Sliding Mode Observer-Based Formation Control of Mobile Robots With Kinematic Disturbance and Unknown Leader and Follower Velocities

“…When the Lyapunov candidate function W is defined as 2 2 W e q = % (43) its time derivative can be expressed by using (42) as…”

Development and Evaluation of the Traction Characteristics of a Crawler EOD Robot

“…The general structure of an EOD mobile robot [https://www.telerob.co odor-evo (accessed on 18 February 2021)] mechanical and drive system [38]; locat environmental perception and security system [40]; data interpretation and task m [41]. Operation in the environment is defined by agility and maneuverability: agi the mobile robot to overcome obstacles [42]; maneuverability is defined by the m quired for a maneuver [43].…”

“…Mobile intervention robots have the following main features: deg lowing a varied trajectory in terms of shape, length, and number of points [44]; speed: it is between 1-10 m/s, depending on the environment The general structure of an EOD mobile robot [https://www.telerob.com/en/products/ teodor-evo (accessed on 18 February 2021)] mechanical and drive system [38]; location system [39]; environmental perception and security system [40]; data interpretation and task management system [41]. Operation in the environment is defined by agility and maneuverability: agility is the ability of the mobile robot to overcome obstacles [42]; maneuverability is defined by the minimum area required for a maneuver [43].…”

A Leader‐Follower Formation Control of Multi‐UAVs via an Adaptive Hybrid Controller

“…It can be seen from the previous section that the x c and y c channels of the system are strongly coupled, and these two channels are decoupled from the z c channel. erefore, the 6 Complexity three channels should be decoupled first when designing the controller [37]. Still, we take the follower as the research object, to solidify the coupling terms in the state equation (11) of the system, and get…”

“…Researchers have proposed various formation configurations, along with multiple control tactics for formation control of multiple UAVs. e key strategies contain behavior-based strategy, the leader-follower method, and the virtual formation structure [4][5][6]. All different strategies have their specific pros and cons.…”