Formation Control of Non-holonomic Vehicles under Time Delayed Communications

TL;DR

This paper addresses formation control for non-holonomic mobile robots with time delays in communication, using a consensus protocol, stability analysis via CTCR, and feedback linearization, validated through simulations.

Contribution

It introduces a stability analysis method for delayed formation control of non-holonomic robots using CTCR and adapts linear control to nonlinear dynamics.

Findings

Exact stability boundaries in delay domain identified

Control method successfully applied to non-holonomic agents

Simulation confirms effectiveness of the approach

Abstract

This document considers the formation control problem for a group of non-holonomic mobile robots under time delayed communications. The agents are assumed to be working under a directed and fixed communication topology. A recently developed formation control technique, based on a consensus protocol for linear systems is revisited. The stability analysis of this control technique, in the domain of the time delays, is performed using the CTCR paradigm under the SDS domain approach. This analysis leads to an exact declaration of the stability boundaries in the domain of the delays. This linear control law is adapted to the nonlinear dynamics of the non-holonomic carts by means of feedback linearization. Simulation results show the applicability of this method to the class of agents considered here.