Coordinated backstepping control of multiple robot system of the leader-follower structure

Abstract

A decentralized control law using a backstepping scheme is proposed to deal with a leader follower multiple robots structure. The coordination strategy combines the leader follower control with the decentralized control. In fact, in the proposed approach, each follower robot only needs the information exchange with its connected neighbors and does not assume the existence of direct communication channel with the leader, which mitigate the implementation cost, mainly when the cooperative robots number increases. The objective of the designed control law is to synchronize positions and velocities of multiple followers interconnected via the neighbor-based rule with respect to the leader's state. The performance of synchronization control system and the nonlinear stability are derived by Lyapunov method, and the tracking controller successfully guarantees asymptotic convergence to zero of both position tracking and synchronization errors. Simulations were performed to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed synchronization control approach.

Flocking Behavior via Leader’s Backstepping on Nonholonomic Robot Group

“…Starting with minimum order of differential equations, it achieves the desired virtual control performance with step-by-step design built on the basis of the employment of virtual control thereby eventually realizing a genuine control law [19]. Backstepping was first introduced by Kokotovic [20] and applied to the design of trajectory tracking controller for the enhanced model of mobile robot [21,22]. Then it was extended to the area of multiple robots.…”