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Distributed Multirobot Formation and Tracking Control in Cluttered Environments

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Published:25 July 2016Publication History
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Abstract

In this article, we propose formation control of nonholonomic mobile robots avoiding obstacles in a distributed manner for cluttered environments. The introduction of a virtual robot restructures the formation control problem into a tracking control problem between the virtual reference robot and follower robots. A novel obstacle avoidance approach is proposed based upon the scaling of whole (partial) formation corresponding to a centralized (distributed) framework. For the distributed environment with limited communication, our approach utilized proportional-integral average consensus estimators, whereby information from each robot diffuses through the communication network. The theoretical contribution is to determine the time constant involved in the diffusion process, which can affect overall system performance. The asymptotic convergence of follower robots to the position and orientation of the reference robot is ensured using the Lyapunov function. The new technique is tested with complete, limited, and no information availability. Several simulation results are provided that demonstrate the formation control and obstacle avoidance for multirobots using the proposed scheme.

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  1. Distributed Multirobot Formation and Tracking Control in Cluttered Environments

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        • Published in

          cover image ACM Transactions on Autonomous and Adaptive Systems
          ACM Transactions on Autonomous and Adaptive Systems  Volume 11, Issue 2
          Special Section on Best Papers from SASO 2014 and Regular Articles
          July 2016
          267 pages
          ISSN:1556-4665
          EISSN:1556-4703
          DOI:10.1145/2952298
          Issue’s Table of Contents

          Copyright © 2016 ACM

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          Association for Computing Machinery

          New York, NY, United States

          Publication History

          • Published: 25 July 2016
          • Accepted: 1 March 2016
          • Revised: 1 February 2016
          • Received: 1 July 2015
          Published in taas Volume 11, Issue 2

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