Leader-following approach based adaptive formation control for mobile robots with unknown parameters

In this paper, a formation control method based on the leader-following approach for nonholonomic mobile robots is proposed. In the previous works, it is assumed that the followers know the leader's velocity by means of communication. However, it is difficult that the followers correctly know the leader's velocity due to the contamination or delay of information. Thus, in this paper, an adaptive approach based on the parameter projection algorithm is proposed to estimate the leader's velocity. Moreover, the adaptive backstepping technique is used to compensate the effects of a dynamic model with the unknown time-invariant and time-varying parameters. From the Lyapunov stability theory, it is proved that the errors of the closed-loop system are uniformly ultimately bounded. Simulation results illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed control method.