Leader-follower formation control of perturbed nonholonomic agents along parametric curves with directed communication

Abstract

In this letter, we propose a novel formation controller for nonholonomic agents to form general parametric curves. First, we derive a unified parametric representation for both open and closed curves. Then, a leader-follower formation controller is designed to drive agents to form the desired parametric curves using the curve coefficients as feedbacks. We consider directed communications and constant input disturbances rejection in the controller design. Rigorous Lyapunov-based stability analysis proves the asymptotic stability of the proposed controller. The convergence of the orientations of agents to some constant values is also guaranteed. The method has the potential to be extended to deal with various real-world applications, such as object enclosing. Detailed numerical simulations and experimental studies are conducted to verify the performance of the proposed method.