The Leader-Follower Formation Control of Nonholonomic Vehicle With Follower- Stabilizing Strategy

Abstract

This letter proposes a follower-stabilizing strategy for leader-waypoint-follower nonholonomic vehicle formation control. The follower-stabilizing strategy consists of the follower-stabilizing area and the follower's velocity correction term. When the follower crosses the waypoint generated by the leader, its steering is susceptible to oscillation. To overcome this issue, the follower-stabilizing area around the waypoint is proposed such that the follower imitates the leader's heading angle as it enters the follower-stabilizing area. At the same time, the velocity correction term drives the follower to track the waypoint stably. The follower-stabilizing strategy is validated by various simulations, which confirm that the follower-stabilizing area effectively reduces steering oscillation and that the velocity correction term verifies stable waypoint tracking. Additionally, GPS and AHRS-based small-scale vehicles are built to demonstrate the proposed method by experiment. The CTRA model-based Kalman filter is designed for GPS and AHRS to estimate the agents' states, such as the heading angle and linear velocities.