Cooperative Control of Multiple Nonholonomic Mobile Agents

TLDR

The paper studies cooperative control of nonholonomic mobile agents. The authors aim to design cooperative control laws enabling groups of such agents to converge to a stationary point or to track a moving target under various communication scenarios. Dynamic control laws based on sigma‑processes, graph theory, and variable transformations are proposed, with analysis of delayed communication effects and demonstrated through simulations and formation control applications. The proposed methods successfully solve formation control problems for wheeled mobile robots.

Abstract

This paper considers two cooperative control problems for nonholonomic mobile agents. In the first problem, we discuss the design of cooperative control laws such that a group of nonholonomic mobile agents cooperatively converges to some stationary point under various communication scenarios. Dynamic control laws for each agent are proposed with the aid of sigma-processes and results from graph theory. In the second problem, we discuss the design of cooperative control laws such that a group of mobile agents converges to and tracks a target point which moves along a desired trajectory under various communication scenarios. By introducing suitable variable transformations, cooperative control laws are proposed. Since communication delay is inevitable in cooperative control, in each of the above cooperative control problems, we analyze the effect of delayed communication on the proposed controllers. As applications of the proposed results, formation control of wheeled mobile robots is discussed. It is shown that our results can be successfully used to solve formation control problem. To show effectiveness of the proposed approach, simulation results are included.