Adaptive dynamic surface control for fault-tolerant multi-robot systems

This paper presents a new robust adaptive control method for multi-robot systems, where the kinematic model of a differentially driven wheeled mobile robot is considered. Particularly, the situations involving partial loss of actuator effectiveness are addressed. Distributed controllers are derived based on dynamic surface control techniques over networked multiple robots. In addition, adaptive mechanisms are applied to estimate the bounds of effectiveness factor and uncertainty bounds. The robust stability of the multi-robot systems are preserved by using the Lyapunov theorem. The proposed controller can make the robots reach a desired formation following a designate trajectory. Simulation results indicate that the proposed control scheme has superior responses compared to conventional dynamic surface control.