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Abstract-This paper considers the control of a group of autonomous mobile robots. A coordinated control scheme based on a leader-follower approach is developed to achieve formation maneuvers. First and second order sliding-mode controllers are proposed for asymptotically stabilizing the vehicles to a timevarying desired formation. The latter controller, based on the relative motion states, eliminates the need for measurement or estimation of the leader velocity. It enables formation stabilization using a vision system carried by the followers and ensures the collision avoidance from the initial time instance. Experimental investigation has been conducted using a test bench made of three nonholonomic mobile robots in order to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed strategy.

A higher order sliding mode control algorithm is proposed for a class of uncertain multi-input multi-output nonlinear systems. This problem can be viewed as the finite time stabilization of a higher order input-output dynamic system with bounded uncertainties. The developed control scheme is based on geometric homogeneity and sliding mode control. The proposed procedure provides explicit conditions on the controller parameters and guarantees robustness against uncertainties. An illustrative example of a hovercraft vessel control demonstrates the advantages of the strategy.