Consensus for formation control of nonholonomic mobile robots

In this article we present novel formation control laws based on artificial potential fields and consensus algorithms for a group of unicycles enabling arbitrary formation patterns for these nonholonomic vehicles. Given connected and balanced graphs we are able to prove stability of the rendezvous controller by applying the LaSalle-Krasovskii invariance principle. Further, we introduce obstacle avoidance, enabling a reactive behavior of the robotic group in unknown environments. The effectiveness of the proposed controllers is shown using computer simulations and finally, a classification w.r.t. existing solutions is done.