Leader-Following Formation Tracking Control of Nonholonomic Mobile Robots Considering Collision Avoidance: A System Transformation Approach

In this paper, the obstacle avoidance problem-based leader–following formation tracking of nonholonomic wheeled mobile robots with unknown parameters of desired trajectory is investigated. First, the under-actuated system is transformed into a fully-actuated system by obtaining an auxiliary control variable using the transverse function. Second, by introducing a potential function for each obstacle, the influence of obstacles is considered in trajectory tracking, and the effect of the potential field on mobile robots is taken into account in the system tracking error. Third, the adaptive laws are designed to estimate the unknown parameters of the desired trajectory. Fourth, the results show that the formation error with respect to the actual position and orientation can be arbitrarily small by selecting appropriate design parameters. Finally, simulation examples are used to demonstrate that the proposed control scheme is effective.