A leader-following formation control of multiple mobile robots with active obstacle avoidance

This paper presents a new strategy in mobile robots leader-follower formation control. The key feature of the algorithm is incorporating leader-follower and leader-leader formation to make a novel formation named leader-leader-follower (l - l - φ). The feedback linearization method is used to exponentially stabilize the relative distance and orientation of the follower with respect to the leaders. The formation controller is designed for both first order and second order kinematic models of the robots. On the other hand a stability condition for the zero dynamics of leader-follower robot formation system is derived through constraining the motion of the leader robot and the formation configuration. Furthermore, accelerated obstacle avoidance is presented by considering obstacle as a virtual leader in our proposed model. Simulation results are presented to show the validity of the proposed methodology.