Mobile robot formation control using a modified leader-follower technique

Abstract

This paper presents a formation control of multiple mobile robots based on the leader-follower technique. The control law of the leader robot is designed to track a specified reference path under a nonholonomic constraint of wheeled mobile robots, while that of the follower robot is designed to follow the leader robot with keeping the specified relative distance and the specified relative angle. This paper proposes a modified follower's control law, called the self-made follower input, in which the control law of the follower robot is given by itself. The state of the leader robot is estimated by the relative relationships between the leader and the follower robot in the discrete-time domain. The effectiveness of the proposed technique is demonstrated in simulations on PC and an experiment using real mobile robots.