Adaptive Control for a Heterogeneous Formation of a Multi-robot System

In the present work, the proposal of an adaptive control applied to a multi-robot system's heterogeneous formation is developed, composed of two land mobile robots and a quadcopter. The modeling of land mobile robots and quadcopter is obtained. Once the different models of each robotic scheme have been analyzed, the mathematical representation of the heterogeneous formation of the multi-robot systems is carried out. Through simulation, the system is presented, and the designed controller algorithms are applied. The implemented algorithm is based on the control of a cascade-type scheme: i) a leader-follower method is used as a strategy to achieve the desired formation structure, and ii) an adaptive control law is designed. Besides, simulation studies show the good behavior of the proposed control law. The adaptive controller proposal presented in this work significantly improved the behavior of the heterogeneous formation of the multi-robot system, reducing errors and making the system more robust. Finally, the Lyapunov theory is used to verify the stability of the proposed controllers.