Backstepping Sliding-Mode Formation Control of Electrically Driven Nonholonomic Mobile Robots

This paper proposes a backstepping sliding-mode formation control method for a group of electrically driven nonholonomic mobile robots. We derived a new state space model of leader-follower based formation. In the proposed model, the dynamics of robots and the actuator dynamics are considered, so unlike many researches that used kinematic control approaches, we derived a dynamic controller using voltage control strategy. Sliding-mode control method is used to deal with disturbances acting on the mobile robots. Once the sliding modes are reached, the external disturbances are completely rejected and the formation of robots will be robust against disturbances. The stability of the proposed control system is proven using Lyapunov stability theory. To verify the effectiveness of the proposed strategy, computer simulation results are illustrated by an uncertain multi-robot system composed of three nonholonomic mobile robots.