A Dynamic Regulation and Scheduling Scheme for Formation Control

This article is concerned with cooperative control problems in formation of mobile robots under the nonholonomic constraints that certain geometrical constraints are imposed on multiple mobile robots throughout their travel. For this purpose, a new method of motion control for formation is presented, which is based on the dynamic regulation and scheduling scheme. It is attractive for its adaptability to the formation structure and desired trajectory. The quality of formation keeping can be evaluated by the instantaneous errors of formation offset and spacing distance. Some kinematics laws are developed to regulate and maintain the formation shape. Simulation results and data analysis show the validity of the proposed approach for a group of robots.