Leader-follower formation control of nonholonomic mobile robots

This paper presents the modeling, initialization, and control of nonholonomic mobile robots navigating with a leader-follower formation scheme, that must attain a planned formation. We use Ackerman's model of a four-wheel mobile robot, graph theory, I/O linearization, and linear approximation to control the dynamics of robot formation using sets of differential equations. These equations use the distance and the visibility angle between leaders and followers to determine how each robot will move. The stability analysis of the proposed control system is included along with computer simulations to validate the performance of the leader-follower formation.