Flocking and Target Interception Control for Formations of Nonholonomic Kinematic Agents
This work addresses coordination challenges for multi-robot systems, but it is incremental as it builds on existing frameworks like distance-based control.
The paper tackled the problem of controlling formations of nonholonomic robots for flocking and target interception, using distance-based control laws and distributed observers, with experimental validation showing convergence to desired formations.
In this work, we present solutions to the flocking and target interception problems of multiple nonholonomic unicycle-type robots using the distance-based framework. The control laws are designed at the kinematic level and are based on the rigidity properties of the graph modeling the sensing/communication interactions among the robots. An input transformation is used to facilitate the control design by converting the nonholonomic model into the single integrator-like equation. We assume only a subset of the robots know the desired, time-varying flocking velocity or the target's motion. The resulting control schemes include distributed, variable structure observers to estimate the unknown signals. Our stability analyses prove convergence to the desired formation while tracking the flocking velocity or the target motion. The results are supported by experiments.