Rigidity-based Cooperative Formation Control of Nonholonomic Multi-mobile Robots for Heavy Workpieces Moving

In this paper, the cooperative formation control problem is studied for nonholonomic multi-mobile robots with heavy workpieces moving considered. A distribution formation control law and virtual velocities are designed based on rigidity graph theory and input state stability (ISS) theory. The proposed control law is designed at the dynamics level via backstepping, which accounts for friction-induced external disturbances and mass uncertainties caused by heavy workpieces moving. Stability analysis proves that all robots are generating and maintaining a predefined formation defined by minimal and infinitesimal rigid graph and are rapidly tracking the desired velocities. Five mobile robots simulations are used to illustrate the validation of the proposed cooperative formation control algorithm.