SUMMARYThis paper deals with the problem of the formation control of nonholonomic mobile robots in the leader–follower scenario without considering the leader information, as a result of its velocity and position. The kinematic model is reformulated as a formation model by incorporating the model uncertainties and external disturbance. The controller is presented in the two-step process. Firstly, the tracking problem is taken into consideration, which can be used as a platform to design a controller for the multi-agents. The proposed controller is designed based on a non-singular fast terminal sliding mode controller (FTSMC), which drives the tracking error to zero in finite time. It not only ensures the tracking but also handles the problem related to non-singularities. Moreover, the design control scheme is modified using high-gain observer to resolve the undefined fluctuations due to man-made errors in sensors. Secondly, the multi-agent tracking problem is considered; hence, a novel formation control is designed using FTSMC, which ensures the formation pattern as well as tracking. Furthermore, the obstacle avoidance algorithm is incorporated to avoid the collision, inside the region of interest. With the Lyapunov analysis, the stability of the proposed algorithm is verified. As a result, simulated graphs are shown to prove the efficacy of the proposed control scheme.
