Formation Control of Unicycle Mobile Robots: a Virtual Structure Approach

In this paper, the formation control problem for unicycle mobile robots is studied. A virtual structure control strategy with mutual coupling between the robots is proposed. The rationale behind the introduction of the coupling terms is the fact that these introduce additional robustness with respect to perturbations as compared to typical leader-follower approaches. The applicability of the proposed approach is shown in experiments with a group of mobile robots controlled over a wireless communication network