Formation Control of Multi-robots Using Backstepping Sliding Mode Control

AbstractDue to the wide application of robots, multi-robot formation plays an increasingly important role in autonomous transportation and service. This paper studies a formation control problem of a multi-robot system based on leader-followers mode. Firstly, according to the formation constraint, a kinematic model is established such that the formation problem is transformed into a trajectory-tracking problem of the robots. Based on this model, a backstepping sliding mode (BSM) control algorithm is proposed to ensure the convergence of follower robots’ tracking errors. In addition, the stability of the whole control system is substantiated in the sense of Lyapunov. Finally, the performance of the designed BSM controller is tested by simulation in circular and curvilinear formation scenarios. The simulation results demonstrate that our presented BSM control law possesses high tracking accuracy.KeywordsMulti-robotFormation controlBackstepping sliding mode