Adaptive leader-follower formation control for autonomous mobile robots

In this paper, adaptive formation control is addressed for a network of autonomous mobile robots in which there are only two leaders knowing the prescribed reference velocity while the others just play the role of followers. Assuming that each follower has only two neighbors to form a cascade interconnection, an adaptive formation control law is designed that allows each follower to achieve a specific triangular formation with its two neighbors without the need to know the velocity of its neighbors. With this scalable design approach, any expected geometric pattern of a group of n robots with two leaders can be realized by assigning an appropriate neighbor relationship and specifying a desired formation for each follower to reach. Both rigorous analysis and simulations are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the adaptive formation controller.