Coordinated Path Following Control of Multiple Nonholonomic Mobile Robots With Prescribed Performance

In this paper, the problem of coordinated path following control is investigated for multiple nonholonomic mobile robots subject to the prescribed tracking error performance. By combining tan-type barrier Lyapunov functions, the graph theory and the backstepping technique, this paper proposes a novel coordinated path following control scheme. The proposed scheme not only achieves the path following control of each robot without the violation of the prescribed transient performance, but also makes multiple robots maintain the given formation pattern along one parameterized path. To make each robot satisfy the prescribed performance, the novel tan-type barrier Lyapunov functions are employed to describe the performance restrictions on tracking errors. To realize the coordinated control, the path variable containment method is used to make the mobile robots follow one parameterized path only based on the path variable information from its neighbours. Finally, the performance of the proposed controller is illustrated by simulation results.