Modeling and controlling a robotic convoy using guidance laws strategies

Abstract—This paper deals with the problem of modeling and controlling a robotic convoy. Guidance laws techniques are used to provide a mathematical formulation of the problem. The guid-ance laws used for this purpose are the velocity pursuit, the devi-ated pursuit, and the proportional navigation. The velocity pursuit equations model the robot’s path under various sensors based con-trol laws. A systematic study of the tracking problem based on this technique is undertaken. These guidance laws are applied to de-rive decentralized control laws for the angular and linear velocities. For the angular velocity, the control law is directly derived from the guidance laws after considering the relative kinematics equa-tions between successive robots. The second control law maintains the distance between successive robots constant by controlling the linear velocity. This control law is derived by considering the kine-matics equations between successive robots under the considered guidance law. Properties of the method are discussed and proven. Simulation results confirm the validity of our approach, as well as the validity of the properties of the method. Index Terms—Guidance laws, relative kinematics equations, robotic convoy, tracking. I