Coordinated path following control of multiple nonholonomic vehicles

This paper addresses the problem of coordinated path following control of multiple nonholonomic vehicles. The control laws are derived based on the leader-follower strategy, driving unicyle-type nonholonomic vehicles at kinematic level onto predefined parallel paths, while keeping an in-line formation. Due to the spatial-temporal decoupling characteristics of individual path following controller, the velocity of the follower can be adapted only based on the information of generalized along-path length from the leader, which keeps the inter-vehicle communication to a minimum. Simulation results illustrate the efficacy of the solution to coordinated control proposed here. Moreover, the theoretical analysis in this paper reveals some important issues raising that the path following control on the first-order unicyle-type nonholonomic systems can be extended to underactuated AUVs in future work.