Formation Control for Leader–Follower Wheeled Mobile Robots Based on Embedded Control Technique

The formation control problem for leader–follower wheeled mobile robots (WMRs) is investigated in this article. A formation control strategy is proposed based on the embedded control technique. Different from the conventional design philosophy of designing the formation controller based on the formation tracking errors directly, the proposed strategy decomposes the formation control task into two subtasks. One is the virtual signal generator (i.e., virtual follower) design, and the other is the trajectory tracking controller design. The virtual signal generator is devised to act as a virtual follower such that it “achieves” the desired formation control goal, whose output is taken as the reference trajectory for the follower. To solve the subtask of trajectory tracking controller design, an unconstrained controller and a constrained controller with saturated velocities are designed, respectively. A rigorous stability analysis of the closed-loop system is given under these two kinds of controllers. Comparative simulations and experiments among the unconstrained controller with higher gains/lower gains and the constrained controller are given to illustrate the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed formation control strategy.