Observer-Based Leader-Following Formation Control for Multi-Robot With Obstacle Avoidance

This paper focuses on the observer-based leader-following formation tracking control for multi-robot with obstacle avoidance. First, based on the leader-follower formation control method, setting the trajectory of the leader robot, then the follower robots track the leader robot. Second, an observer for the followers is designed to estimate the state of the leader robot, which can limit the estimation errors to a small value at short time-frame. Moreover, the gain controller and corrective controller are presented to complete the formation task and implement the trajectory transformation, respectively. In addition, an improved obstacle avoidance algorithm is devised to avoid the obstacles by adjusting the angle between the leader robot and the followers. Finally, the simulation results are presented to verify the effectiveness of the proposed control scheme. The main advantages of this paper are both an observer-based controller includes gain control and corrective control is developed for the nonlinear multi-robot system, and the obstacle avoidance problem during movement is solved with the optimal method.