Implementation of Leader-Follower Formation Control of a Team of Nonholonomic Mobile Robots

A control method for a team of multiple mobile robots performing leader-follower formation by implementing computing, communication, and control technol-ogy is considered. The strategy expands the role of global coordinator system andcontrollers of multiple robots system. The global coordinator system creates no-collision trajectories of the virtual leader which is the virtual leader for all vehicles,sub-virtual leaders which are the virtual leader for pertinent followers, and virtualfollowers. The global coordinator system also implements role assignment algorithmto allocate the role of mobile robots in the formation. The controllers of the individualmobile robots have a task to track the assigned trajectories and also to avoid collisionamong the mobile robots using the artificial potential field algorithm. The proposedmethod is tested by experiments of three mobile robots performing leader-followerformation with the shape of a triangle. The experimental results show the robustnessof formation of mobile robots even if the leader is manually moved to the arbitrarylocation, and so that the role of a leader is taken by the nearest mobile robot to thevirtual leader.