Adaptable Robot Formation Control: Adaptive and Predictive Formation Control of Autonomous Vehicles

The ability to use cooperative small vehicles is of interest in many applications. From material transportation to farming operations, the use of small machines achieving small tasks, but able to work together to complete larger tasks, permits us to rely on a unique kind of vehicle. To be efficient, such a point of view requires the vehicles to be, at least partially, autonomous and their motion must be accurately coordinated for the tasks to be properly achieved. This article proposes a control framework dedicated to the accurate control of a fleet of mobile robots operating in formation. Decentralized control relying on interrobot communication has been favored. To ensure a high relative positioning, adaptive and predictive control techniques are considered, allowing us to account for the influence of several phenomena (such as dynamic perturbations or bad grip conditions) depreciating the relevance of classical approaches based on ideal robots and ideal contact conditions assumptions.