Moving formation convergence of a group of mobile robots via decentralised information feedback

Abstract

In this article, a decentralised information feedback mechanism is introduced to a group of mobile robots such that the robots asymptotically converge to a given moving formation. It is assumed that the robots can exchange only position information according to a pre-specified communication graph. Each node represents a robot. Two robots are neighbours of each other if there is an edge between the two nodes. A feedback controller is performed for each robot by only using its own velocity information and the position information from its neighbours. It is proven that if the graph is connected, then the convergence to the moving formation of the closed-loop system is guaranteed. Several numerical simulations are presented to illustrate the results.

Keywords:

• moving formation
• decentralised feedback
• formation control
• communication graph
• multi-robot systems

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to the associate editor and the reviewers for their helpful and valuable comments and suggestions for improving this article. This research was supported by NSFC 60774089.