Title: Formation control of multiple mobile robots utilising synchronisation approach

Authors: Ibrahim M.H. Sanhoury; Shamsudin H.M. Amin; Abdul Rashid Husain

Addresses: Center of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Materials and Manufacturing Research Alliance, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 81310 Johor Bahru, Malaysia ' Center of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Materials and Manufacturing Research Alliance, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 81310 Johor Bahru, Malaysia ' Center of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Materials and Manufacturing Research Alliance, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 81310 Johor Bahru, Malaysia

Abstract: In this paper, a new synchronous control rule is proposed for multiple mobile robot trajectories tracking while maintaining time varying formation. Each robot is controlled to track the desired path while its motion is synchronised with the two neighbouring robots to perform and maintain a desired time-varying formation. The dynamic model of the wheeled mobile robot is derived and divided into a translational and rotational dynamic model. A new synchronous translational controller is proposed to guarantee the asymptotic stability of both position and synchronisation errors. A simulation result of 20 robots has been conducted to validate the effectiveness of the proposed synchronous controller in the time-varying formation tasks.

Keywords: formation control; multiple robots; multi-robot systems; mobile robots; dynamic modelling; robot synchronisation; time-varying formation; synchronous control; robot control; robot trajectories; trajectory tracking; robot formations; path following; wheeled robots; simulation.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMMS.2013.052786

International Journal of Mechatronics and Manufacturing Systems, 2013 Vol.6 No.1, pp.94 - 114

Received: 05 Jun 2012
Accepted: 24 Oct 2012

Published online: 12 Jul 2014 *

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