Fixed-Time Formation Control of Unicycle-Type Mobile Robots With Visibility and Performance Constraints

This article presents a fixed-time leader-follower formation control protocol for a swarm of unicycle-type mobile robots with visibility and performance constraints. Under a vision-based formation control framework, mobile robots calculate their control signals with only the local relative distance and bearing angle provided by onboard stereo or RGB-D cameras. Since the sensing capability of the fixed onboard cameras is subject to limited range and angle of view, the field-of-view constraints are considered to ensure that each follower can always detect its leader and meanwhile avoid collision with the leader. The time-varying and asymmetric performance constraints on formation tracking errors are applied to guarantee the transient and stead-state performance. Furthermore, the proposed control protocol can be extended to address the control design problem without constraint requirements. Based on the fixed-time control design and Lyapunov analysis, formation tracking errors are shown to converge to a small neighborhood of zero in fixed settling time. Simulation and experiment studies are performed to illustrate the effectiveness of the formation control protocol.

Automated summary

This article presents a fixed-time leader-follower formation control protocol for unicycle-type mobile robots, considering visibility and performance constraints to ensure the effectiveness of the formation control. The control protocol uses onboard cameras and applies time-varying and asymmetric performance constraints to guarantee transient and steady-state performance.