Journal Compilation Part 1

Collection of the
research journals and

conferences
contributions

Declaration of Authorship
I have contributed to a total of 14 publications during my PhD thesis

including 4 journal papers and 10 conference papers. Other publications
followed up after my PhD defense counting up to 42 publications including
journals and conference papers. I am the first author of the majority of these
contributions, and the second author of 3 journal papers and the third
author of 6 journal and 3 conference papers. For authorship declaration, I
have done almost all the work in the papers where I am the first authors. I
have contributed strongly in theoretical aspect in all the papers where I am
the second authors. As a third author, I have only contributed by a part of
the work and supplied the principal contributor by some constructive
comments.

Dr Jawhar Ghommam
Assistant Professor
Department of Physics and Instrumentation
National Institute of applied Sciences and Technology
Carthage University
Senior Member of the CEM-Lab at ENIS

Journal paper appeared
two years later after my
Ph.D defense
Published in IET Control Theory and Applications

Received on 10th April 2008
Revised on 27th January 2009
doi: 10.1049/iet-cta.2008.0131
ISSN 1751-8644
Global stabilisation and tracking control of
underactuated surface vessels
J. Ghommam
1
F. Mnif
1,2
N. Derbel
1
1
Research Unit on Mechatronics and Autonomous Systems, ENIS, Sfax, Tunisia
2
Sultan Qaboos University, P.O. Box 33, Muscat 123, Oman
E-mail: mnif@squ.edu.om
Abstract: In this study, the authors solve the problem of uniform global asymptotic stabilisation and global
exponential tracking for an underactuated ship with only two propellers. A unied backstepping design
methodology is proposed to tackle both the stabilisation and tracking problems. The obvious advantage of
this framework is that the controller design procedure is systematic and analytically simple. The study also
addresses the tracking problem with constant bias of environmental disturbances. Simulation results are
provided to validate our theoretical results.
1 Introduction
Stabilisation and tracking control of position (sway and surge)
and orientation (yaw) of underactuated surface ships have
recently received considerable attention from the control
community. The challenge of these problems is due to the
fact that the motion of the underactuated ship in question
possesses three degrees of freedom (yaw, sway and surge
neglecting the motion in roll, pitch and heave) whereas there
are only two available controls (surge force and yaw
moment) under a non-integrable second-order non-
holonomic constraint. By Brocketts theorem [1], it can be
shown that any continuous time invariant feedback control
law does not make the null solution of the underactuated
ship dynamics asymptotically stable in the sense of
Lyapunov. Furthermore the underactuated surface ship
system is not transformable into a chained system [24].
Consequently, existing control schemes developed for
standard chain-form systems [5, 6] cannot be applied directly.
In [2], a discontinuous state feedback control law was
proposed by using s-process to exponentially stabilise the
underactuated ship at the origin. In [3], the authors
developed a discontinuous time-varying feedback stabiliser
for a non-holonomic system and applied to underactuated
ships. Some local exponential stabilisation results were
reported in [4] based on time-varying homogeneous control
approach. An application of averaging and homogeneous
system theory to underactuated ships was reported in [7].
By transforming the underactuated ship kinematics and
dynamics into the so-called skew form, some dynamic
feedback results on stabilisation were given in [8, 9], in
which the authors developed a high-gain dynamic feedback
control law to achieve global ultimate regulation and
tracking of underactuated ships. The dynamics of closed-
loop system is increased because of the use of some
exponentially stable oscillator.
In parallel, the tracking control problem has also received a
great deal of attention because of its practical importance; see
[10] and the references therein. Several authors have studied
the issue of tracking control problem. A continuous time
invariant state feedback controller was developed in [11] to
achieve global exponential position tracking under an
assumption that the reference surge velocity is always
positive. Unfortunately, the orientation of the ship was not
controlled. An application of the recursive technique
proposed in [12] for the standard chain form systems was
used in [13] to provide a high gain-based, local exponential
tracking result. Using a transformation of the ship tracking
system into the so-called convenient form similar to the
form of the mobile robot system [14], a global practical
tracking controller was developed in [9]. The dynamics of
closed-loop system is increased because of the controller
designed to make the state of the transformed system track
the auxiliary signals generated by some oscillator. Based on
IET Control Theory Appl., 2010, Vol. 4, Iss. 1, pp. 7188 71
doi: 10.1049/iet-cta.2008.0131 & The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2010
www.ietdl.org
the cascaded approach, a global tracking result was obtained
in [15]. The stability analysis relies on the stability theory of
linear time-varying systems. Based on Lyapunov direct
method and passivity, Jiang [5] proposed two constructive
tracking solutions for the underactuated ship. However, in
both [5] and [16] authors imposed the yaw velocity to be
non-zero. Under this assumption straight lines cannot be
tracked. In [17], a solution to the problem of trajectory
tracking without imposing the yaw velocity to be non-zero.
In [18], the authors proposed a single controller, called
universal controller, that solved both stabilisation and
tracking simultaneously.
This paper considers the problem of controlling the planar
position and orientation of an autonomous surface vessel
using two independent side thrusters. Two transformations
are introduced to represent the system into a pure cascade
form made of a driven and a driving subsystem. First we
show through some key properties of the model that the
global and uniform asymptotic stabilisation problem of the
resulting cascade system can be reduced to the stabilisation
problem of the driving subsystem, which has a special state
representation called rst-order chained form. It has been
shown [19] that the underactuated surface vessel belongs to
the class of systems that cannot be asymptotically stabilised
by a static feedback control law. However, it is shown in
[19] that the ship has the property of small time locally
controllable from any equilibrium point, this implies that it
is possible to asymptotically stabilise the ship using a time-
varying feedback control law [20, 21]. Hence a combined
backstepping and time-varying control approach is
employed for the stabilisation of the driving subsystem via a
partial state feedback. We show that the proposed control
law globally uniformly stabilises the reduced model,
ensuring the uniform global asymptotic stabilisation of the
underactuated surface vessel model. The suggested
approach provides a systematic procedure to transform a
class of non-holonomic dynamical systems into non-linear
cascade form. Such representation opens the possibility of
developing more constructive control tools than those
already existing in the literature, for example [22, 23].
Next, we exploit the cascade structure to construct a
suitable dened trajectory generated by the dynamic
equations of a virtual underactuated ship. We show that we
can nd a feedback controller that forces the ship to
exponentially follow the desired trajectory from any initial
conditions. Using a cascade approach, we show that the
tracking error dynamics of the ship can be decomposed as a
cascade of one non-linear system (driven subsystem) and a
rst-order chained form system with integrator (driving
subsystem). A backstepping approach is then employed to
regulate the tracking error of the driving subsystem via a
partial state feedback. Unlike [5, 16] no restriction is made
to the yaw velocity to be non-zero and therefore our
approach does not heavily restrict the form of the tracking
trajectories. The proposed design, relying heavily on the
inherent cascade interconnection structure of the ship
dynamics, produces explicit Lyapunov function via the
backstepping design. Such advantage offered the possibility
to consider environmental disturbances in the design. By
exploiting the cascade structure of the underactuated
surface vessel, we design a controller that compensate for
the constant slowly varying bias of the disturbances.
Compared with the stabilising and tracking controls in [18]
and [17], our schemes are simple in structure and can be
easily implemented.
The reminder of the paper is organised as follows. Section 2
introduces the non-linear control system and describes the
dynamics of the underactuated surface vessel. Section 3
describes a change of the system coordinates, and then the
design of a globally asymptotically stabilising controller
using a combined backstepping technique with time-varying
control. Section 4 describes the systematic tracking control
scheme and presents the main global exponential tracking
for the underactuated surface vessel. Section 5 presents a
robust controller that compensate for the slowly varying bias
disturbances. Section 6 presents a simulation example and
discusses the obtained results. Finally Section 7 concludes
this study and provides possible directions for future work.
2 Ship model
2.1 Kinematic model
Marine vessels require six independent coordinates to
determine their complete conguration (position and
orientation). The six different motion components are
conveniently dened as surge, sway, heave, roll, pitch and
yaw (see Fig. 1). It is common to reduce the general six
degrees of freedom model to motion in surge, sway and
yaw only. This is done by neglecting the heave, roll and
pitch modes, which are open-loop stable for most ships.
The state vector h [ SE(2) is then dened by
h [x, y, c]
`
(1)
where (x, y) [ R
2
is the position of the ship given in an
inertial frame and c [ [0, 2p) is the heading angle of the
Figure 1 Vessel motion variable
72 IET Control Theory Appl., 2010, Vol. 4, Iss. 1, pp. 7188
& The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2010 doi: 10.1049/iet-cta.2008.0131
www.ietdl.org
ship relative to the geographic North. The general kinematic
equations of motion of the vehicle in the horizontal plane can
be developed using a global coordinate frame {U} and a
body-xed coordinate frame {B}, as depicted in Fig. 1. The
kinematic equations take the form
_ h R(c)n (2)
where R is the rotation matrix in yaw and n [ R
3
is a vector
containing the linear body-xed velocities.
R(c)
cos c sin c 0
sin c cos c 0
0 0 1
_
_
_
_
(3)
with the property R
`
R
1
: The velocity vector n is dened
by
n [u, v, r]
`
(4)
Here u is the forward velocity (surge), v is the transverse
velocity (sway) and r is the angular velocity in yaw.
2.2 Dynamic model
Neglecting the motions in heave, roll and pitch the simplied
equations of motion for surge, sway and heading yield [24]
_ u
m
v
m
u
vr
d
u
m
u
u
1
m
u
t
u
(5)
_ v
m
u
m
v
ur
d
v
m
v
v (6)
_ r
m
uv
m
r
uv
d
r
m
r
r
1
m
r
t
r
(7)
where m
u
: m X
_ u
, m
v
: m Y
_ v
, m
r
: I
z
N
_ r
, and
m
uv
: m
u
m
v
are mass and hydrodynamic added mass
terms and d
u
: X
u
X
juju
juj, dv : Y
v
Y
jvjv
jvj and
d
r
: Nr N
jrjr
jrj capture hydrodynamic damping
effects. The symbols t
u
and t
r
denote the external force in
surge and the external torque about the z-axis of the
surface vessel, respectively. Notice that the equation for _ v in
(6) is not driven by any external input.
3 Global stabilisation of an
underactuated surface vessel
Proposition 1: There exists no continuous time-invariant
state feedback that renders the system (2)(7) asymptotically
stable about the origin.
Proof: (see Proposition 2.3 in [4] for a similar proof). A
Since system(2) (7) is real analytic, there exists a piecewise
analytic feedback law which can stabilise the closed-loop
system to a given equilibrium [25].
3.1 State transformation
In this subsection, we will consider the problem of designing
a time-varying feedback control law for system (2) (7). As in
[20, 24] we propose the following global diffeomorphism
change of coordinate
z R
`
h (8)
where z [z
1
, z
2
, z
3
]
`
. Taking the time derivative of (8), we
can write
_ z
_
R
`
h R
`
_ h (9)
Noting
_
R Rr (10)
with
r
0 r 0
r 0 0
0 0 1
_
_
_
_
(11)
equation (9) becomes
_ z r
`
R
`
h R
`
_ h
r
`
R
`
h R
`
Rn (12)
Combining the kinematic equation (12) with dynamics
(5) (7), we obtain the following
_ z
1
u z
2
r
_ z
2
v z
1
r
_ z
3
r
_ u t
u
_ v Aur Bv
_ r t
r
(13)
where we denoted by A m
u
=m
v
, B d
v
=m
v
and the new
control input t
u
and t
r
as
t
u

m
u
m
v
vr
d
u
m
u
u
1
m
u
t
u
t
r

m
uv
m
r
uv
d
r
m
r
r
1
m
r
t
r
3.2 State transformation
In order to remove the unactuated variable v from the
dynamic of the second equation of (13), following [26, 27],
we propose a new coordinate variable Z
2
such that
Z
2
z
2
v
B
(14)
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The (z
1
, Z
2
)-subsystem dynamics can be expressed as
_ z
1
u Z
2
r
v
B
r (15)
_
Z
2

A
B
ur z
1
r (16)
We now introduce a new variable a such that
a
A
B
u z
1
(17)
This leads to the following cascade systems
1
:
_ z
1

B
A
z
1
B
A
a Z
2
v
B
_ _
r
_ v Bv B(z
1
a)r
_
_
_
2
:
_
Z
2
ar
_ z
3
r
_ a t
a
_ r t
r
_
_
(18)
where
t
a

B
A
(z
1
a) r Z
2
v
B
_ _
A
B
t
u
is the new control input of subsystem

2
that will be
designed later. Noting that by assigning a dynamic to t
a
is
equivalent to choose a dynamic for the real control input t
u
of the surface vessel.
3.2.1 Control problem formulation: The control
objective is to nd a feedback control law that stabilises the
underactuated ship to a desired constant position and
orientation. Without any loss of generality we assume the
desired equilibrium point to be the origin. To nd
appropriate state feedback t
u
and t
r
of the form
t
u
t
u
(t, Z
2
, z
3
, a)
t
r
t
r
(t, Z
2
, z
3
, a, r)
(19)
with t being the time variable, such that the closed-loop
trajectories of (18) has global uniform asymptotic stable
equilibrium (GUAS).
3.3 Cascade non-linear system
System (18) in closed-loop form with the control input (19)
can be viewed as two interconnected subsystems in cascade
form that can be written as follows
1
: _ x
1
f
1
(t, x
1
) G(t, x)x
2
(20)
2
: _ x
2
f
2
(t, x
2
) (21)
where x
1
: [z
1
, v], x
2
: [Z
2
, z
3
, a, r], x : [x
1
, x
2
]. The
function f
1
(t, x
1
) is continuously differentiable in (t, x
1
)
and f
2
(t, x
2
), G(t, x) are continuous in their arguments and
locally Lipschitz.
Remark 1: Subsystem

1
of (18) can be put under the
form (20), where
f
1
(t, x
1
) G(t, x)x
2

B
A
z
1
B
A
a Z
2
v
B
_ _
r
Bv B(z
1
a)r
_
_
_
_
(22)
Theorem 1 [28] (UGAS of a cascade system): The
cascade system

1
and

2
given by (20) (21) has global
uniform asymptotic stability if
i. The nominal subsystem _ x
1
f
1
(t, x
1
) is uniformly globally
asymptotically stable
ii. The interconnected term satises
kG(t, x)k
2
u
1
(kx
2
k
2
) u
2
(kx
2
k
2
)kx
1
k
2
where u
1
, u
2
: R
!0
!R
!0
are continuous.
iii. Subsystem
2
: _ x
2
f
2
(t, x
2
) is GUAS and for all t ! t
0
_
1
0
kx
2
(t)k dt k(kx
2
(t
0
)k)
where the function k is a class-K function.
Proposition 2: For the dynamic underactuated ship model
the transformed subsystem f
1
(t, x
1
) given by
f
1
(t, x
1
) W

B
A
z
1
Bv
_ _
(23)
is globally exponentially stable.
Proof: System(23) is linear withstrictly negative time invariant
eigenvalues given by l
1
B=A and l
2
B. A
Proposition 3: The component G(t, x) in G(t, x)x
2
given
by
G(t, x)x
2
W

B
A
a Z
2
v
B
_ _
r
B(z
1
a)r
_
_
_
_
(24)
satises a norm upper bound limit of the form
kG(t, x)k
2
u
1
kx
2
k
2
u
2
(kx
2
k
2
)kx
1
k
2
(25)
where u
1
max(B, 1=B), and u
2
(kx
2
k
2
) (B 1)kx
2
k
2
B=A:kk
2
refers to the Euclidian norm dened for vectors
and the induced Euclidian norm dened for matrices.
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Proof (see Proposition 4.2 in [27] for similar proof):
Conditions (i) and (ii) of Theorem 1 are satised for the
transformed model of the underactuated surface vessel. To
complete the conditions of the theorem, one needs to
design a suitable control that makes subsystem

2
GUAS.
It has to be noticed that subsystem

2
by considering its
control inputs are r w
1
and t
a
w
2
, could be written in
a rst-order chained form system with integrator as follows
_ z
3
w
1
_ a w
2
_
Z
2
aw
1
_ w
1
t
r
(26)
In the next section, we aim to design a smooth time-varying
state-feedback law that makes the origin of (26) globally
asymptotically stable.
3.4 Controller design
The main purpose of this section is to develop a systematic
control design procedure for system (26). The stepwise
design procedure is an iterative use of the popular
integrator backstepping approach [29].
Dene a smooth C
1
function f(w
1
) as follows
f(w
1
) w
2l 1
1
(27)
where l is a non-negative integer greater than 1.
Since system (26) is in the form of a rst-order non-
holonomic integrator, the backstepping procedure can be
applied in four steps.
Step 1: Consider the Z
2
and a subsystem of (26), that is
_
Z
2
aw
1
_ a w
2
(28)
where w
2
is considered as the control input, and w
1
is
assumed to be a smooth function of time. Denote j
1
Z
2
and decompose a as
a 4j
2
(29)
where 4 is a stabilising function of time and j
2
is a
new backstepping variable. Dening the Lyapunov function
V
1
1=2j
2
1
, its derivative along the solutions of (28) yields
_
V
1
j
1
4w
1
j
1
j
2
w
1
(30)
Choosing the stabilising function 4 to be
4 c
1
j
1
f(w
1
) (31)
with c
1
. 0, (30) gives
_
V
1
c
1
j
2
1
w
2l 2
1
j
1
j
2
w
1
(32)
By virtue of (30) and (32), we obtain the following j
1
-dynamic
_
j
1
c
1
j
1
w
2l 2
1
j
2
w
1
(33)
Notice that for arbitrary w
1
(t), 4 0 whenever Z
2
0.
Step 2: Recall that j
2
a 4, its time derivative is given by
_
j
2
w
2
@4
@Z
2
aw
1
@4
@m
1
_
f(w
1
) (34)
where m
1
f(w
1
). Dene the Lyapunov function for system
(28) as V
2
V
1
1=2j
2
2
. The time derivative of V
2
along the
solutions of (28) yields
_
V
2
c
1
j
2
1
w
2l 2
1
j
1
j
2
w
1
j
2
w
2
@4
@Z
2
aw
1
@4
@m
1
_
f(w
1
)
_ _
(35)
At this step we select the control input w
2
to be as follows
w
2
c
2
j
2
j
1
w
1
@4
@Z
2
aw
1
@4
@m
1
_
f(w
1
) (36)
with c
2
. 0. The time derivative of the function
V
2
1=2j
2
1
1=2j
2
2
along the solutions of (28) satises
_
V
2
c
1
j
2
1
w
2l 2
1
c
2
j
2
2
(37)
Under the new coordinates j (j
1
, j
2
)
`
, subsystem (38) in
closed loop with (36) is transformed into
_
j
1
c
1
j
1
w
2l 2
1
j
2
w
1
_
j
2
c
2
j
2
j
1
w
1
(38)
Remark 2: Note that (37) holds as long as w
1
is a smooth
function of time. This important observation will be used in
the stability analysis of subsystem (28).
Step 3: As already mentioned in Remark 2, the previous steps
do not impose any condition on w
1
except the smoothness.
In order to achieve boundedness and convergence
properties for the original states of (28), let w
1
be an
output of the following non-linear time-varying system.
_
z
1
z
2
_
z
2
a
0
z
3
a
1
z
1
a
2
z
2
g(j
1
, j
2
)d(t)
w
1
z
1
(39)
where the a
i
s are real constants such that the polynomial
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s
3
a
2
s
2
a
1
s a
0
is Hurwitz, and g is a smooth function
such that g(j
1
, j
2
) 0 j
1
j
2
0, d(t) is a non-constant
and bounded periodic function. For simplicity we choose
d(t) sin(t).
Proposition 4: The equilibrium point (z
3
, Z
2
, a) 0 and
z
1
z
2
0 of the resulting time-varying system made of
(28) and (39) has global uniform asymptotic stability.
Step 4: Since w
1
is not the true control input for the dynamic
model of subsystem

2
, the control law (39) cannot be
directly used. We introduce the new variable ~ w as
~ w w
1
z
1
(40)
then considering the Lyapunov function candidate
V
3
V
2
1=2 ~ w
2
, from (37), it follows
_
V
3
c
1
j
2
1
w
2l 2
1
c
2
j
2
2
~ w( t
r

_
z
1
) (41)
Therefore choosing the following control law
t
r
c
3
~ w
_
z
1
(42)
with c
3
. 0, we establish
_
V
3
c
1
j
2
1
w
2l 2
1
c
2
j
2
2
c
3
~ w
2
(43)
Now one can summarise the previous constructive procedure
in the following theorem.
Theorem 2: For subsystem (26), if the control inputs are
chosen as
t
a
c
2
a (c
2
c
1
f(r) r)Z
2
@4
@Z
2
ar
@4
@m
1
_
f(r) (44)
t
r
c
3
r c
3
z
1
_
z
1
(45)
then, the origin (z
3
, Z
2
, a, r) is GUAS, where control
parameters c
2
. 0, c
3
. 0.
Proof: Let Y (z
1
w
1
, z
2
, ~ w)
`
, then from (43), we can
write that
_
V
3
min{c
1
, c
2
, c
3
}kY k
2
using the LaSalleYoshizawas theorem[30], the equilibrium
Y 0 is then GUAS. In light of the proof of Proposition 4, we
know that z
1
0 and (z
3
, Z
2
, a) 0 are GUAS, it follows
immediately that the origin (z
3
, Z
2
, a, r) is GUAS. A
From Theorem 2, the origin x
2
(z
3
, Z
2
, a, r) is proved
to be GUAS, then by denition [30] we have
kx
2
(t, x
2
(t
0
))k b(kx
2
(t
0
)k, t)
where b(:, :) is a class KL function, then there exists a class K
function k such that
_
1
0
b(kx
2
(t
0
)k, t) dt k(kx
2
(t
0
)k)
Corollary 1: Conditions (i), (ii) and (iii) of Theorem 1 for
system (18) are veried, then the equilibrium
(z
1
, v, z
3
, Z
2
, a, r)
`
(0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0)
`
is GUAS.
4 Global tracking for an
underactuated surface vessel
The main purpose of this section is to extend the above
stabilisation solution to the tracking case. We consider the
problem of tracking a reference surface vessel. That is, given
an underactuated surface vessel modelled by (2) (7), it is
desired that it follows a ctitious reference underactuated
surface vessel (see Fig. 2). For this purpose, we assume that
a feasible reference trajectory (x
d
, y
d
, c
d
, u
d
, v
d
, r
d
, t
ud
, t
rd
)
is given, that is, a trajectory satisfying
_ h
d
R(c
d
)n
d
_ u
d

m
v
m
u
v
d
r
d

d
u
m
u
u
d

1
m
u
t
ud
_ v
d

m
u
m
v
u
d
r
d

d
v
m
v
v
d
_ r
d

m
uv
m
r
u
d
v
d

d
r
m
r
r
d

1
m
r
t
rd
(46)
Notice that a drawback exists in considering the error
coordinates x x
d
and y y
d
since these position errors
depend on the choice of the inertial frame [13]. This
problem is solved by dening the change of coordinates (8)
as presented in Section 3. With z
d
being a reference vector,
now we consider the same transformations made in
Subsection 3.2 for the virtual underactuated surface vessel,
hence the desired trajectory in new coordinates is dened by
Figure 2 Surface vessel: tracking problem
www.ietdl.org
the following model
_ z
1d

B
A
z
1d

B
A
a
d
Z
2d

v
d
B
_ _
r
d
_ v
d
Bv
d
B(z
1d
a
d
)r
d
_
Z
2d
a
d
r
d
_ z
3d
r
d
_ a
d
t
a
d
_ r
d
t
rd
(47)
We assume that the reference signals (x
d
, y
d
, u
d
, v
d
, r
d
) and
(t
ud
, t
rd
) are bounded over [0, 1).
Dening the tracking errors as
e
1
z
1
z
1d
, e
2
v v
d
, e
3
Z
2
Z
2d
e
4
z
3
z
3d
, e
5
a a
d
, e
6
r r
d
the error dynamic is then given as follows
0
1
:
_ e
1

B
A
e
1
B
A
e
5
(e
3
e
6
r
d
e
3
Z
2d
e
6
)
1
B
(e
2
e
6
r
d
e
2
v
d
e
6
)
_ e
2
Be
2
B(e
5
e
6
r
d
e
5
a
d
e
6
e
1
e
6
r
d
e
1
z
1d
e
6
)
_
_
(48)
0
2
:
_ e
3
e
5
e
6
r
d
e
5
a
d
e
6
_ e
4
e
6
_ e
5
t
a
t
a
d
_ e
6
t
r
t
rd
_
_
the control problem is then transformed into a stabilisation
problem of the error dynamics.
Proposition 5: The states of
0
1
can be made bounded and
exponentially convergent if the states of
0
2
are bounded and
exponentially convergent.
Remark 3: Noting the result in Proposition 5, it is only
needed to design a stabilising control law for

0
2
. In the
following, a non-linear control law is proposed to stabilise
0
2
using the backstepping technique.
4.1 Controller design
Dening the following change of variables as in [31]
x
1
e
3
ae
4
, x
2
e
5
, x
3
e
4
w
1
r, w
1d
r
d
, w
2
t
a
w
2d
t
a
d
, ~ w
1
w
1
w
1d
, ~ w
2
w
2
w
2d
Subsystem

0
2
in (48) can be rewritten in a
triangular-like form as
_ x
1
w
1d
x
2
w
2
x
3
_ x
2
~ w
2
_ x
3
~ w
1
_
~ w
1
t
r
t
rd
(49)
As in Subsection 3.3 we dene a smooth function f(w
1d
) as
follows
f(w
1d
) w
2l 1
1d
(50)
where l is a non-negative integer greater or equal to 1. The
backstepping design can then be approached following the
following procedure.
Step 1: Starting with the x
1
-subsystem of (49)
_ x
1
w
1d
x
2
w
2
x
3
(51)
we consider the variable x
2
as a virtual control input and the
variables w
1d
and x
3
as time-varying function.
Consider the following Lyapunov function
W
1

1
2
x
2
1
(52)
The time derivative of W
1
along the solutions of (49) satises
_
W
1
w
1d
x
1
x
2
x
1
w
2
x
3
(53)
Observe that, for any c
1
. 0, 4
1
(x
1
, f(w
1d
)) c
1
f(w
d
)x
1
is a stabilising function for system (53) whenever x
3
0. We
introduce a new variable z as follows
z x
2
4
1
(x
1
, f(w
1d
)) (54)
Then, (54) yields
_
W
1
c
1
w
1d
f(w
1d
)x
2
1
w
1d
x
1
z x
1
w
2
x
3
(55)
Step 2: The variable z is now viewed as a virtual control. Let
the candidate Lyapunov function dened by
W
2
W
1
1
2
z
2
(56)
the time derivative of (56) along the trajectories of (49)
satises
_
W
2
c
1
w
1d
f(w
1d
)x
2
1
w
1d
x
1
z x
1
w
2
x
3
z (w
2
w
2d
)
@4
1
@f
df
dt

@4
1
@x
1
dx
1
dt
_ _
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Applying the following control law
w
2
w
2d
w
1d
x
1
c
2
z
@4
1
(x
1
, f(w
1d
))
@f
df(w
1d
)
dt
@4
1
(x
1
, f(w
1d
))
@x
1
w
1d
x
2
(57)
with c
2
. 0 we obtain
_
W
2
c
1
w
1d
f(w
1d
)x
2
1
c
2
z
2
x
1
z
@4
1
(x
1
, f(w
1d
))
@x
1
_ _
w
2
x
3
(58)
Step 3: At this step, we consider the following candidate
Lyapunov function for the rst three equations of system (49)
W
3
W
2
1
2
x
2
3
(59)
By virtue of (58), differentiating W
3
along the solutions of
(49) gives
_
W
3
c
1
w
1d
f(w
1d
)x
2
1
c
2
z
2
x
3
(w
1
w
1d
)
x
1
z
@4
1
(x
1
, f(w
1d
))
@x
1
_ _
w
2
x
3
By choosing the following control law
w
1
w
1d
c
3
x
3
x
1
z
@4
1
(x
1
, f(w
1d
))
@x
1
_ _
w
2
_ _
w
1d
4
2
(x
1
, x
2
, x
3
, w
2
, w
1d
) (60)
with c
3
. 0 and
4
2
c
3
x
3
x
1
z
@4
1
(x
1
, f(w
1d
))
@x
1
_ _
w
2
_ _
we obtain
_
W
3
c
1
w
1d
f(w
1d
)x
2
1
c
2
z
2
c
3
x
2
3
(61)
Since the control law w
1
is not the true control input for the
transformed subsystem (49), we introduce a new variable
w
1e
as
w
1e
~ w
1
4
2
(x
1
, x
2
, x
3
, w
2
, w
1d
)
It is then straightforward to see that the time derivative of W
3
along the solutions of (49) becomes
_
W
3
c
1
w
1d
f(w
1d
)x
2
1
c
2
z
2
c
3
x
2
3
x
3
w
1e
(62)
Consider, the Lyapunov function candidate
W
4
W
3
1
2
w
2
1e
(63)
which is positive denite. Its time derivative along the
trajectory of (49) gives
_
W
4
c
1
w
1d
f(w
1d
)x
2
1
c
2
z
2
c
3
x
2
3
w
1e
(x
3
( t
r
t
rd
) _ 4
2
) (64)
Therefore choosing the control law
t
r
t
rd
x
3
_ 4
2
c
4
w
1e
(65)
with c
4
. 0, we establish
_
W
4
c
1
w
1d
f(w
1d
)x
2
1
c
2
z
2
c
3
x
2
3
c
4
w
2
1e
(66)
4.2 Stability analysis
In this section, we state our main result for the exponential
tracking control problem of (49).
Proposition 6: The zero equilibrium (e
3
, e
4
, e
5
, e
6
) of the
closed-loop subsystem (65), (57) and (49) is exponentially
stable if the reference of angular velocity satises
lim
t!1
inf jr
d
(t)j . 0 (67)
Corollary 2: By virtue of Propositions 5 and 6 we conclude
that the whole system

0
1
and

0
2
is globally exponentially
stable for all t ! t
.
5 Robustness issues
To reduce wear and tear of actuators and propulsion system
the ship control system should counteract the slowly
varying environmental motion components: model
uncertainties, wave drift, currents and mean wind forces.
The unknown mean environmental force and its direction
are assumed to be constant (or at least slowly varying). To
use the proposed structure in practice, disturbances should
be taken into account in the control design. The aim of
this section is to discuss a simple way to design a controller
to handle these disturbances. When disturbances are
present, the dynamic part of the surface vessel (5) (7) can
be written as
_ u
m
v
m
u
vr
d
u
m
u
u
1
m
u
t
u
t
udis
_ v
m
u
m
v
ur
d
v
m
v
v t
vdis
_ r
m
uv
m
r
uv
d
r
m
r
r
1
m
r
t
r
t
rdis
(68)
where t
udis
, t
vdis
and t
rdis
being the disturbances acting on the
surge, sway and yaw axes, respectively. Processing the same
www.ietdl.org
Figure 3 Time evolution of the ships potion and heading
a Time evolution of the state c
b Time evolution of the state x
c Time evolution of the state y
Figure 4 Time evolution of the ships velocities
a Time evolution of the state u
b Time evolution of the state v
c Time evolution of the state r
www.ietdl.org
transformation as in Section 3, (68) can be rewritten as
_ u t
u
t
udis
_ v Aur Bv t
vdis
_ r t
r
t
rdis
_
_
_
(69)
We rst deal with the disturbance component on the sway
direction t
vdis
. The idea is to handle t
vdis
through
designing an observer to estimate t
vdis
as
_
^ v k
x
1
~ v Bur B^ v ^ t
vdis
_
^ t
vdis
k
x
2
~ v (70)
where ~ v v ^ v. Clearly, the estimate errors ~ v and ~ t
vdis
are asymptotically exponentially stable if all roots of
the characteristic polynomial H(s) s
2
k
x
1
s k
x
2
associated with the system
_
~ v
_
~ t
vdis
_ _
k
x
1
1
k
x
2
0
_ _
~ v
~
t
vdis
_ _
have strictly negative real parts. Hence the desired sway
dynamic to track should be as given below
_ v
d
Au
d
r
d
Bv
d
^ t
vdis
(71)
It is now straightforward to conclude the following lemma,
which will be useful for establishing the convergence of the
closed-loop system.
Figure 5 Tracking errors convergence
a Trajectory in X 2 Y plane
b Time evolution of the tracking error u 2u
d
c Time evolution of the tracking error v 2v
d
d Time evolution of the tracking error r 2r
d
www.ietdl.org
Lemma 1: Suppose that the ocean current disturbance is
constant. Consider the observer system (70), where the
gains k
x
1
and k
x
2
are chosen such that the observer system
is asymptotically stable. Then, the variables ~ v, ~ t
vdis
, ^ v, ^ t
vdis
,
_
^ t
vdis
, v
d
, _ v
d
are bounded. Moreover, the errors ~ v and ~ t
vdis
converge to zero as t goes to innity.
The error tracking cascade form (48) together with
disturbances being introduced and the observer (70) is
written as
0
1
:
_ e
1

B
A
e
1
B
A
e
5
(e
3
e
6
r
d
e
3
Z
2d
e
6
)
1
B
(e
2
e
6
r
d
e
2
v
d
e
6
)
_ e
2
Be
2
B(e
5
e
6
r
d
e
5
a
d
e
6
e
1
e
6
r
d
e
1
z
1d
e
6
) ~ t
vdis
_
_
(72)
0
2
:
_ e
3
e
5
e
6
r
d
e
5
a
d
e
6
~ t
vdis
B
_ e
4
e
6
_ e
5
t
a
t
a
d

A
B
t
udis
_ e
6
t
r
t
rd
t
rdis
_
_
Similarly as in Section 4, a stabilising control for subsystem
0
2
is needed to ensure the stabilisation of the cascade
system. See the statement of the theorem given below
whose proof is given in Appendix 9.3.
Theorem 3: Consider the non-linear invariant system
CascadeObs
composed by the interconnected system (72),
the current observer (70) and the control law
t
a
t
a
d
k
3
_ r
d
e
3
k
3
r
d
(e
5
e
6
r
d
e
5
a
d
e
6
)
k
5
e
5
(k
3
k
4
1)r
d
e
3
e
3
e
6
A
B
^ t
udis
t
r
t
rd
k
1
e
6
k
2
e
4
^ t
rdis
(73)
where k
1
, k
2
, k
3
and k
4
are positive constants. Let the update
law for the unknown disturbances components t
udis
and t
rdis
be given as
_
^ t
udis
g
01
proj(e
5
, ^ t
udis
)
_
^ t
rdis
g
02
proj(e
6
, ^ t
udis
)
(74)
where g
01
and g
02
are the adaptation gains and the operator
proj represents the Lipschitz projection algorithm [32], (see
Appendix 9.2). Let X
CascadeObs
: [t
0
, 1) !R
7
, t
0
! 0,
X
CascadeObs
: (e
1
, e
2
, e
3
, e
4
, e
5
, e
6
, ~ t
vdis
)
`
be a solution of
CascadeObs
and D , R
7
the domain in which the
closed-loop system is forward complete. (A system is
forward complete on the domain D if for all initial
conditions and starting times t
0
in D all solutions are
dened for all t ! t
0
.) Then, for every initial condition
X
CascadeObs
(t
0
) [ D the control signals and the solution
X
CascadeObs
(t) are bounded. Furthermore, for every initial
condition X
CascadeObs
(t
0
) [ D the error tracking variables
(e
1
, e
2
, e
3
, e
5
, e
6
)
`
converges to zero as t !1.
6 Simulation results
In this section, we carry out computer simulations to
demonstrate the performance of our stabilisation and
tracking controllers. Simulations are performed on the
model of Cybership I [24]. The ship has the length of
1.19 m, and a mass of 17.6 kg and the following parameters :
m
u
19, m
v
35:2, m
r
4:2, d
u
4, d
v
1, d
r
10.
The control parameters in (44) and (45) are taken as
c
1
10, c
2
10, c
3
15, a
0
2, a
1
7 and a
2
0:5.
Assume the initial conditions of the system are
x(0) y(0) c(0) u(0) v(0) r(0)
_ _
4 2 0:4
_
0 0 0. Figs. 3ac and 4ac show the time evolution of the
original state variables (x, y, c) and (u, v, r). As expected,
simulations reveal that the vessel converges globally
Figure 6 Perturbations effect on the tracking errors
a Trajectory in X2Y plane
b Error convergence of e
1
, e
2
with perturbations effect
www.ietdl.org
uniformly to the origin with acceptable dynamic
performances. It can be observed that the dynamic of the
yaw angle c presents some oscillation because of the
presence of the term sin(t) in the control law.
In trajectory tracking control, we assume the initial condition
of the system is x(0) y(0) c(0) u(0) v(0) r(0)
_ _
8:77 4:8 0:5 0:1 0 0

_ _
. The reference trajectory
to be tracked is a circular trajectory. Assume the initial
reference state are x
d
0, y
d
0, c
d
0rad,
u
d
(0) 1 ms
1
, v
d
(0) 1 ms
1
, r
d
(0) 0:5 s
1
, the
reference trajectory (x
d
, y
d
, c
d
, u
d
, v
d
, r
d
) can be generated
since it has to satisfy (47) with proper t
ud
and t
rd
. We see
from Figs. 5ad that the control law (57)(65) guarantees
exponential tracking convergence to the origin. Therefore the
performance of the tracking error system is satisfactory.
In simulation, based on Section 6 the control parameters
are taken as k
1
50, k
2
80, k
3
5, k
4
10, k
5
3,
g
01
g
02
1, whereas the initial conditions are taken
identically the same as before. We assume that the
environmental disturbances are generated like in [33]
t
udis
t
vdis
t
rdis
3(1 rand(:)), where rand(
.
) is the
random noise with a magnitude of 1 and zero lower bound.
This choice results in non-zero-mean disturbances.
However, in practice disturbances may be different. It
should be noted that upon this choice boundaries on the
disturbances are guaranteed. The effectiveness of the
control law (73) (74) is illustrated in Figs. 6a,b and 7. It
can be seen from these gures that our proposed controller
is able to force the underactuated surface vessel to track the
virtual ship asymptotically, it is also noted that the
proposed controller forces the yaw angle to converge to a
small ball specied by the gain k
2
around the desired angle
to track. This offset from the desired angle together with
the forward speed of the ship prevents the surface vessel to
drift away from the trajectory.
7 Conclusion
In this paper, a framework has been presented for the
problems of stabilisation and tracking for underactuated
surface vessel in cascade form. The global stabilisation of
the underactuated surface vessel is solved by means of a
new family of smooth time-varying dynamic feedback laws.
The idea laying behind the methodology is a combined
application of integrator backstepping and time-varying
techniques. Tracking controllers with and without
environmental disturbances have been systematically derived
using Lyapunov direct method and backstepping technique.
Simulation results have revealed that the control objectives
are achieved with acceptable dynamic performances.
Current work is under way to extend our methodology in
this paper to design a robust adaptive controller to adapt the
unknown ship parameter. When the velocity measurement
are unavailable, the Coriolis matrix, which results in the
cross terms in the system dynamics, causes difculty in
designing an observer. However, an output feedback
control scheme for underactuated ships proposed in [34]
could be useful. Our future work is to investigate the
possibility of designing a robust observer for the formation
control-based trajectory tracking for underactuated surface
vessel.
Figure 7 Error convergence of e
3
, e
4
, e
5
, e
6
with perturbations effect
www.ietdl.org
8 Acknowledgment
We thank the Reviewers and the Editor-in-Chief for their
helpful comments which helped us improve the paper
signicantly.
9 References
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Boston, MA, 1983), pp. 181191
[2] REYHANOGLU M.: Exponential stabilization of an
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1997, 33, pp. 22492254
[3] SORDALEN O.J., EGLAND O.: Exponential stabilization of
nonholonomic chained system, IEEE Trans. Autom.
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[4] PETTERSEN K.Y.: Exponential stabilization of
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University of Science Technology, 1996
[5] JIANG Z.P.: Global tracking control of underactuated
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[6] SAMSON C.: Control of chained form systems
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stabilization of mobile robot, IEEE Trans. Automat.
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10 Appendix
10.1 Useful lemma
The following lemma is needed for our proof and is proved in
([30], Theorem 5.1)
Lemma 2: Suppose that S : [0, 1) !R satises
D
S aS(t) b(t)
where D
denotes the upper right-hand derivative, a is a

positive constant and b [ L
p
, p [ [0, 1). Then
jSj
L
p
(ap)
1=p
jS(0)j (aq)
1=q
jbj
L
p
where q is the complementary index of p, that is,
1=p 1=q 1. When p 1, the following holds
jS(t)j e
at
jS(0)j a
1
jbj
L
p
10.2 Projection operator
The operator, proj, is the Lipschitz continuous projection
algorithm applied in our case as follows:
proj(4, ^ v) 4, if J( ^ v) 0
proj(4, ^ v) 4, if J( ^ v) ! 0 and J
^ v
( ^ v) 0
proj(4, ^ v) (1 J( ^ v))4, if J( ^ v) .0 and J
^ v
( ^ v) .0
where J( ^ v) ( ^ v
2
v
2
M
)=(k
2
2kv
M
), J
^ v
( ^ v) (@J
^ v
( ^ v)=
@ ^ v), k is an arbitrarily small positive constant, ^ v is an estimate
of v and jvj v
M
. The projection algorithm is such that if
_
^ v proj(4, v) and ^ v(t
0
) v
M
then
(a) ^ v(t) v
M
k, 80 t
0
t 1
(b) proj(4, ^ v) is Lipschitz continuous
(c) jproj(4, ^ v)j j4j
(d) ~ vproj(4, ^ v) ! ~ v4 with ~ v v ^ v
10.3 Proof of Proposition 4
The system composed of _ z
3
w
1
and (39) can be written as
_
z Az h(t, j
1
, j
2
) (75)
where
z
z
3
z
1
z
2
_
_
_
_
_
_, h
0
0
g(j
1
, j
2
)d(t)
_
_
_
_
_
_ and A
0 1 0
0 0 1
a
0
a
1
a
2
_
_
_
_
_
_
In order to prove that system (75) is GUAS, we should rst
show the global uniform boundedness then the global
uniform attractiveness of the solution.
10.3.1 Global uniform boundedness: To prove
boundedness of z, we consider the Lyapunov function
candidate V(z) z
`
Pz, where P is a real symmetric
positive-denite matrix that satises the Lyapunov equation
PA A
`
P I . The time derivative of V(z) along the
www.ietdl.org
solutions of (75) satises
_
V kzk
2
2z
`
Ph(t, j
1
, j
2
)
kzk
2
jh(t, j
1
, j
2
)j
l
max
(A
`
A)
_ kzk
where l
max
denotes the maximum eigenvalue of a matrix.
Since we know that g(j
1
, j
2
) is bounded, then there exists
a constant e such that
jg(x
1
, x
2
)d(t)j , e
therefore, for any u , 1 we have
_
V kzk
2
l
max
(A
`
A)
_ kzk
(1 u)kzk
2
ukzk
2
l
max
(A
`
A)
_ kzk; 0 ,u ,1
(1 u)kzk
2
, 8kzk ! r
where r 1=
l
max
(A
`
A)
_
. Since
l
min
(P)kzk
2
V(z) l
max
(P)kzk
2
then
_
V
1 u
l
max
(P)
V, 8kzk ! r
Subsequently, we have that
kz(t)k
l
max
(P)
l
min
(P)
_
exp
1 u
2l
max
(P)
(t t
0
)
_ _
kz(t
0
)k,
8kzk ! r
Let b
(l
min
(P)=l
max
(P))
_
r, and C
b
a set dened by
C
b
{z [ R
3
: V(z) l
min
(P)b
2
}
The set C
b
contains the ball B
r
(0) {z [ R
3
: kzk r}
since
kzk r
l
min
(P)
l
max
(P)
_
b )l
max
(P)kzk
2
)V(z) l
min
(P)b
2
Therefore any solution that starts inside C
b
cannot leave it
because
_
V is negative on the boundary. Consequently, for
all t ! t
0
the following inequality holds
kz(t)k b
and therefore the solutions z(t) of (75) is uniformly bounded.
In view of (37), we have j
2
1
(t) j
2
2
(t) j
2
1
(t
0
) j
2
2
(t
0
), by
making use of the structure of a as in (29) and the
smoothness of the stabilising functions 4 the uniform
stability of the equilibrium point (z
3
, Z
2
, a) 0 and
z
1
z
2
0 can therefore be established.
10.3.2 Global uniform attractiveness: To establish
the attractiveness of the solutions, we can invoke
Krasovskii LaSalles invariance principle [30, 35, 36]. We
consider the term d(t) sin (t) in (75) as the rst
component of the bounded solution of the extra differential
equation
_ x
0 1
1 0
_ _
x, x(0)
0
1
_ _
where z [d(t),
_
d(t)]
`
. Consider now the following extended
cascade autonomous system
_
j
1
c
1
j
1
w
2l 2
1
j
2
w
1
_
j
2
c
2
j
2
j
1
w
1
_
z Az Bg(j
1
, j
2
) 1 0
_ _
x
_ x
0 1
1 0
_ _
x
(76)
where B (0, 0, 1)
`
. By applying the Krasovkii LaSalles
theorem, any trajectory (j
1
(t), j
2
(t), z(t), x(t)) (which has
been proved to be bounded) tends to the largest invariant
subset M , E, where E is the set of all points where
_
V
2
(j) 0. E is given by
E E
1
<E
2
(77)
where
E
1
{(j
1
(t), j
2
(t), z(t), x(t)) [ R
7
jw
1
j
1
j
2
0}
(78)
and
E
2
{(j
1
(t), j
2
(t), z(t), x(t)) [ R
7
jj
1
j
2
0} (79)
The claim of convergence of j
1
and j
2
is repeated twice and
the argument also, one because E
2
is the largest subset and
the other because g(j
1
, j
2
) 0. By virtue of (75), z !0 as
t !1, and nally the state (z
3
, Z
2
, a)
`
approaches zero
as t !1.
Obviously E
2
is an invariant set. If E
2
was not the largest
invariant subset, there would exist a trajectory
(j
1
(t), j
2
(t), z(t), x(t)) [ E for all t ! 0 and a non-empty
open interval I such that (j
1
(t), j
2
(t)) =(0, 0) for all
t [ I. This implies that w
1
(t) 0 for all t [ I. From
(38), one can see that j
1
and j
2
are constant on I since the
derivatives are identically zero. Furthermore, referring to
www.ietdl.org
(39) we have that for t [ I the following holds
_ z
3
0
0 a
0
z
3
a
1
z
1
a
2
z
2
g(j
1
, j
2
)d(t)
(80)
which leads to a contradiction with (80) and with the
property that g(j
1
, j
2
) 0, iff j
1
j
2
0. A
For

0
1
, consider the following Lyapunov function
U
1
0:5e
`
De (81)
where e (e
1
, e
2
)
`
and D diag(B, 1=B). Its derivative

0
1
gives
_
U
1
Be
1
_ e
1
1
B
e
2
_ e
2

B
2
A
e
2
1
e
2
2

B
2
A
e
1
e
5
Be
1
(e
3
e
6
r
d
e
3
Z
2d
e
6
)
e
1
e
2
e
6
e
1
e
2
r
d
v
d
e
6
e
1
e
2
e
5
e
6
e
2
r
d
e
5
a
d
e
2
e
6
e
2
e
1
e
6
r
d
e
1
e
2
z
1d
e
2
e
6
(82)
Since (x
d
, y
d
, u
d
, v
d
, r
d
) and (t
1d
, t
2d
) are bounded and
subsequently are the variables (z
1d
, Z
2d
, a
d
), it follows, by
taking norms,
_
U
1
satises
_
U
1
a
1
U
1
a
2
(t)

U
1
_
(83)
where
a
1
2 min B,
B
A
_ _
a
2
(t)
2B
p
B
2
A
e
5
jBe
3
e
6
j jBr
d
e
5
j
_
jBZ
2d
e
6
j jv
d
e
6
j ja
d
e
6
j je
6
e
5
j
_
Note that by assumption (Proposition 4.1) on

0
2
, we have
that a
2
(t) is bounded and exponentially convergent.
Performing the change of variables w(t)
U
1
_
to obtain a
linear differential inequality and using the fact that
_ w
_
U
1
=2

U
p
1
, it follows, when U
1
=0, that
_ w
a
1
2
w
1
2
a
2
(t) (84)
When U
1
0, it can be shown [30], that the upper right-
hand derivative D
w satises D
w (a
2
(t)=2) and
consequently inequality (84) is satised for all values of V
1
.
Thus applying the comparison lemma [30], w satises
w(t) w(t
0
)e
a
1
=2(tt
0
)
1
2
_
t
t
0
e
a
1
=2(tu)
ja
2
(u)j du (85)
and consequently
e
1
(t)
e
2
(t)
_
_
_
_
_
_
_
_
_ _
e
1
(t
0
)
e
2
(t
0
)
_
_
_
_
_
_
_
_
_ _
e
a
1
=2(tt
0
)
1
2

a
1
p
_
t
t
0
e
a
1
=2(tu)
ja
2
(u)j du
e
1
(t
0
)
e
2
(t
0
)
_
_
_
_
_
_
_
_
_ _
e
a
1
=2(tt
0
)
a
1
3
p
[1 e
a
1
=2(tt
0
)
] sup
t!t
0
ja
2
(t)j (86)
Since a
1
. 0 and by assumption that a
2
(t) is bounded and
converges exponentially to zero, then it follows from (86)
that there exists s
0
. 0 and a g class-K function such that
e
1
(t)
e
2
(t)
_
_
_
_
_
_
_
_
_ _
g ke
0
1
(t
0
), e
0
2
(t
0
)k
_ _
e
s
0
(tt
0
)
(87)
where e
0
1
(e
1
, e
2
)
`
and e
0
2
(e
3
, e
4
, e
5
, e
6
)
`
.
The condition on the reference state r
d
implies that there
exists a nite time t
! 0 such that jr
d
(t)j ! k and hence
jw
1d
j ! k for all t ! t
.
Let
b min{c
1
k
2k2
, c
2
, c
3
, c
4
}
Then (61) implies
_
W
4
(t, x) 2bW
4
(t, x), 8t ! t
(88)
Consequently, for any pair of time instants t ! t
0
! 0
W
4
(t, x(t)) e
2bt
e
2b(tt
0
)
V
3
(t
0
, x(t
0
)) (89)
By construction, W
4
(t, x) W
4
(t, V(u
e
)), where u
e

(e
3
, e
4
, e
5
, e
6
)
`
is lower and upper bounded by quadratic
functions of variable u
e
near the origin u
e
0. More
precisely, there exist two positive constants b
1
, b
2
such that
b
1
ju
e
j
2
W
4
(t, V(u
e
)) b
2
ju
e
j
2
, 8t ! 0 (90)
www.ietdl.org
Then 8t ! t
0
! 0, we establish
ju
e
(t)j
b
2
b
1
_
e
bt
e
b(tt
0
)
ju
e
(t
0
)j (91)
which completes the proof. A
10.6 Proof of Theorem 3
The proof is organised as follows: First, it will be shown that
under the controller (73) (74), a solution for subsystem
e
0
2
(e
3
, e
4
, e
5
, e
6
)
`
is bounded for all t ! t
0
.
Furthermore we show that due to the fact that e
6
converges
to zero as t !1 and the convergence property of the error
estimate ~ t
vdid
from Lemma 1 that (e
3
, e
5
)
`
also converges to
zero as t !1. To prove convergence to zero of the driven
subsystem e
0
1
(e
1
, e
2
)
`
, we show rst that (e
1
, e
2
)
`
is
input-to-state stable (cf. e.g. [30]) with respect to a function
of the variables errors tracking e
0
2
and ~ t
vdis
being viewed as
inputs. Boundedness and convergence of e
0
1
(e
1
, e
2
)
`
to
zero as t !1 will then follow.
Convergence analysis of e
0
2
: For subsystem e
0
1
(72), if we
select t
r
as (73), we can easily show that e
6
converges to zero
as t !1; this is done by taking a non-negative function
V
2
0:5(e
2
6
k
2
e
2
4
~ t
2
rdis
=g
01
)
whose derivative along the solutions of the second and the
fourth equations of (72), and using property (d) of the
projection algorithm satises
_
V
2
k
1
e
2
6
(92)
Inequality (92) implies that the solution (e
4
, e
6
, ~ t
rdis
) is
bounded. Applying Barbalats lemma [30] to (92) gives
lim
t!1
e
6
(t) 0.
Consider now the motion of e
3
and e
5
. Let the new variable
e
5
e
5
k
3
r
d
e
3
, then
_ e
3
k
3
r
2
d
e
3
k
3
r
d
e
6
e
3
e
6
a
d
e
5
(e
6
r
d
)
~ t
vdis
B
_
e
5
t
a
t
a
d

A
B
t
udis
k
3
_ r
d
e
3
k
3
r
d
_ e
3
_
_
(93)
If t
a
is chosen as (73) and the update law
_
^ t
udis
as (74), let the
non-negative function
V
3
0:5(e
2
3
e
2
5
~ t
2
udis
=g
02
)
differentiating V
3
and using property (d) of the projection
algorithm, we have
_
V
3
k
3
r
2
d
e
2
3
k
4
e
2
5
k
3
r
d
e
6
e
2
3
e
3
e
6
a
d

k
3
r
d
B
e
5
~ t
vdis
a
3
(t)V
2
2k
3
jr
d
e
6
jV
2
2
p
ja
d
e
6
j
V
2
_
2
p
k
3
B
jr
d
~ t
vdis
j
V
p
2
where a
3
(t) 2min{k
3
r
2
d
, k
4
}. Let w
2

V
3
_
, we have
_ w
2

a
3
2
(t) k
3
jr
d
e
6
j)w
2
2
p
2
(ja
d
e
6
j jr
d
~ t
vdis
j
_ _
therefore
w
2
(t) w
2
(t
0
)e
_
t
t
0
(a
3
=2(s)k
3
jr
d
(s)e
6
(s)j) ds
_
t
t
0
2
p
2
ja
d
(s)e
6
(s)je
_
t
t
0
(a
3
=2(q)k
3
jr
d
(q)e
6
(q)j) dq
ds
_
t
t
0
2
p
2
jr
d
(s)~ t
vdis
(s)je
_
t
t
0
(a
3
=2(q)k
3
jr
d
(q)e
6
(q)j) dq
ds
Since r
d
and a
d
are bounded and (e
6
, ~ t
vdis
) converges to zero
as t !1, obviously w
2
converges to zero. Therefore V
3
converges to zero. Furthermore e
3
and e
5
converge to zero.
Thus e
5
converges to zero as t !1.
Convergence analysis of e
0
1
: For subsystem

0
1
, again
consider the Lyapunov function dened in (81), whose
derivative along the solutions of the rst and second
equations of (72) gives
_
V
1
a
1
V
1
(a
2
(t)
2
B
_
j~ t
vdis
j)

V
1
_
2a
1
V
1
2b
1
V
1
_
where we have dened
a
1

a
1
2
and b
a
2
(t)
2

1
2B
_
j~ t
vdis
j
Setting w
3

V
1
_
, we obtain
D
w
3
a
1
w
3
b
1
(94)
Equation (94) and Lemma 2 from the Appendix implies that
jw
3
(t)j (a
1
p)
1=p
jw
3
(t
0
)j (a
1
q)
1=q
jb
1
j
L
p
and
jw
3
(t)j e
a
1
t
jw
3
(t
0
)j a
1
1
jb
1
j
L
1
(95)
www.ietdl.org
Thus, from (95) and
jej
1
l
min
(D)
_ jw
3
j
where l
min
(D) represents the minimum engine value of D.
We nd the L
1
gain of the error e
jej
L
1

1
l
min
(D)
_ e
a
1
t
jw
3
(t
0
)j
1
l
min
(D)
_ a
1
1
jb
1
j
L
1
(96)
which shows that the
0
1
is ISS with respect to b
1
. By noting
that (96) is equivalent to
jej
L
1

1
l
min
(D)
_ e
a
1
t
jw
3
(t
0
)j
1
l
min
(D)
_ a
1
1
a
2
(t)
2
L
1
1
2B
_
j~ t
vdis
j
L
1
_ _
(97)
thus e is ISS with respect to a
2
(t) and ~ t
vdis
as inputs. Since
a
2
(t) and ~ t
vdis
are bounded and converge to zero as t !1
it follows that e (e
1
, e
2
)
`
is bounded and converge to
zero as t !1, which completes the proof. A
www.ietdl.org

Coordinated formation
control of fully and
underactuated marine
crafts
Int. J. Modelling, Identification and Control, Vol. 15, No. 2, 2012 97

Copyright 2012 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.
Formation control of multiple marine vehicles
with velocity reference estimation-based
passivity-control design
Jawhar Ghommam*
Mechatronics and Autonomous Systems,
Ecole Nationale dIngnieurs de Sfax,
BP W, 3038 Sfax, Tunisia
E-mail: jghommam@gmail.com
*Corresponding author
Faal Mnif
Mechatronics and Autonomous Systems,
Ecole Nationale dIngnieurs de Sfax,
and
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering,
Sultan Qaboos University,
P.O. Box 33, Muscat 123, Oman
E-mail: mnif@squ.edu.om
Oscar Calvo
University of the Ballearic Islands Palma de Mallorca,
Cra. de Valldemossa, Km 7.5. Palma (Illes Balears), Spain
E-mail: oscar.calvo@uib.es
Abstract: This paper addresses the problem of coordination path following control of multiple
autonomous vehicles. Stated briefly, the problem consists of steering a group of vehicles along a
specified path, while holding a desired inter-ship formation pattern. Path following for each
vehicle amounts to reducing an appropriately defined geometric error to zero. We first show a
passivity property for the path following system and, next, combine this with a passivity-based
synchronisation algorithm to coordinate the vehicles along their paths. Vehicle coordination is
achieved by adjusting the speed of each vehicle along its path according to information
exchanged on the positions of a subset of the other vehicles, as determined by the communication
topology adopted. We further assume the unavailability of the reference velocity to each vehicle;
we consider the situation where this information is only available to a leader of this formation.
Distributed observers are designed for the follower vehicles, under the assumption that the
velocity of the leader cannot be measured in real time. Simulations results are presented and
discussed.
Keywords: cooperative control; path following; Serret-Frenet; passivity theory; marine vehicle;
non-linear observer.
Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Ghommam, J., Mnif, F. and Calvo, O. (2012)
Formation control of multiple marine vehicles with velocity reference estimation-based
passivity-control design, Int. J. Modelling, Identification and Control, Vol. 15, No. 2,
pp.97107.
Biographical notes: Jawhar Ghommam received his BSc from Institut Nationale des Sciences
Appliques et de Technologies (INSAT), Tunisia, in 2003, MSc in Control Engineering in the
Laboratoire dInformatique, de Robotique et de Micro-electronique (LIRMM), Montpellier,
France in 2004, and PhD in Control Engineering and Industrial Computer in 2008 jointly from
the Universit of Orl, France and Ecole Nationale dIngnieurs de Sfax, Tunisia. He is an
Assistant Professor of Control Engineering, at the Institut Nationale des Sciences Appliques et
de Technologies (INSAT), Tunisia. He is a member of the research unit on Mechatronics and
Autonomous Systems (MECA). His research interests include non-linear control of
underactuated mechanical systems, adaptive control, guidance and control of underactuated
ships, and cooperative motion of non-holonomic vehicles.
98 J. Ghommam et al.
Faal Mnif received his MSc and PhD in Control and Robotics from the Ecole Polytechnique de
Montreal, in 1991 and 1996, respectively. He is an Associate Professor of Control Engineering
and Robotics at the National Institute of Applied Sciences and Technology, Tunis, Tunisia. He is
currently on leave from Sultan Qaboos University, Oman, where he is holding a faculty position
with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He is also a member of the
research unit on Mechatronics and Autonomous Systems, Tunisia. His main research interests
include robot modelling and control, control of autonomous vehicles, modelling and control of
holonomic and non-holonomic mechanical systems, and robust and non-linear control.
Oscar Calvo graduated as a Telecommunications Engineer, from the National University of
La Plata (UNLP), Argentina in 1979, received his Masters degree MSEE in Electrical
Engineering and Computing from the Chicago Institute of Technology, (IIT), USA in 1988 and
his PhD from the Universidad Politecnica de Catalunya, (UPC), Barcelona, Spain in 2004. He
held a professorship at the UIB (Spain) where he taught undergraduate courses on power
electronics, control of electrical machines and industrial electronics. Sadly, he died while this
paper was being prepared for publication, leaving his family, friends, colleagues and students in
great sorrow.
This paper is a revised and expanded version of a paper presented at the Biannual International
Conference on Signal Systems and Devices (SSD2009) held in Djerba, Tunisia, March 2326
2009.

1 Introduction
In the last few years, coordination control of dynamic
agents has received a major attention within the control
community, partly due to a broad application of multi-agent
systems including flocking/swarming (Reynolds, 1987),
formation control (Fax and Murray, 2004), and sensor
networks (Corts and Bullo, 2003). Today, relevant
applications utilising formation control can be found
everywhere; in sea, on land, in the air, and in space.
While each of these areas poses its own challenges,
several common threads can be found. In most cases, the
agents (henceforth called vehicles) are dynamically
decoupled, in the sense that the motion of one does not
directly affect the others. Instead, the vehicles are coupled
throughout their joint tasks. These tasks must be
accomplished in the face of non-trivial vehicle dynamics.
Decisions must be made by each vehicle using only limited
information about the other vehicles which may be subject
to uncertainty and transmission delay. The reaction of a
vehicle on other vehicles motions renders the formation an
interconnected dynamical system, which behaviour depends
not only on the individual vehicle dynamics, but also on the
nature of their interconnection (Cheng et al., 2006;
Antonelli et al., 2006). Environmental factors can impact
the overall formation goal, the actions of individual vehicles
within the formation, and the ability of vehicles to
communicate.
This paper addresses the problem of coordinated
path following where multiple vehicles are required to
follow pre-specified paths while keeping a desired
inter-vehicle formation pattern. This problem arises in
gathering efficient data from the environment. The vehicle
formation serves as a reconfigurable sensor array.
Adaptation in this context might mean that the resolution of
this sensor array increases. A number of other realistic
vehicle operation scenarios can also be envisioned that
require cooperative motion control of marine or other types
of vehicles.
The problem of coordinated path following control has
recently come to the forum. See e.g., Skjetne et al. (2002),
Ghommam et al. (2008a, 2008b) and the reference therein
for an introduction to the subject and an overview of
important theoretical issues that warrant consideration.
In Brhaug et al. (2006), a coordinated motion control
approach for underactuated underwater vehicles is
proposed. Independent LOS-based cross-track controllers
that make the vehicles follow a given straight line path in
3D, and independent coordination controllers that ensures
convergence to the desired formation pattern, are proposed.
In Kaminer et al. (2007), a methodology for the problem of
coordinated control of multiple autonomous vehicles that
operate under strict spatial and temporal constraints was
presented. The framework proposed integrates algorithms
for path generation, path following, coordination and
adaptive control. In these papers, the proposed schemes
adopted for coordination path following, share a common
strategy in that the problem of coordinated path following is
partially decoupled into two:
1 path following, where the objective is to find local
closed loop control laws to steer each vehicle to its path
at a reference speed
2 multiple vehicle coordination, where the goal is to
adjust the reference speeds of the vehicles about the
desired formation speed, so as to reach formation.
However, the coordination problem based on this
method lacks a complete solution addressing explicitly
practical constraints that arise from the characteristics
of the supporting inter-vehicle communication network
such as communication failures, multi-path effects and
distance-dependent delays. Some of these issues, however,
have been partially addressed in the literature. The
mathematical setup adopted to solve such a problem was
Formation control of multiple marine vehicles with velocity reference estimation-based passivity-control design 99
well rooted in Lyapunov stability and graph theory to model
the topology of the underlying communication network
(Ghabcheloo et al., 2007).
The main issue in this paper is the formation control
aspect in cooperative behaviour of marine vehicles. More
specifically, how a powerful tool from passivity theory
(Arcak, 2007) can be used for formation control issues. We
solve the coordinated path following problem for a class of
fully-actuated marine vehicles moving in two-dimensional
space. The framework presented in Arcak (2007) assumed
that the reference velocity is available to each agent
in the formation. In this paper, we propose to relax this
assumption to the situation where only one leader possesses
this information while the other members reconstruct the
velocity profile to recover the desired formation pattern.
The solution adopted is based on passivity theory and
addresses explicitly the vehicle dynamics as well as the
constraints imposed by the topology of the inter-vehicle
communications network. Each vehicle is equipped with a
controller that makes the vehicle follow a predefined path.
The speed of each vehicle is then adjusted so that the whole
group of vehicles will keep a desired formation pattern. In
this framework, we represent the closed-loop system as the
feedback interconnection of a dynamic block for path
variable coordination and another block that incorporates
the path following systems. The design of each block is
made passive then the stability of the overall system is
proven by using passivity concepts.
This paper builds upon and combines previous results
obtained by Ghabcheloo et al. (2007) on path following and
the authors of this paper on coordination control-based
passivity control design (Ghommam et al., 2009a, 2009b)
and passivity theory as a design tool for group coordination
(Arcak, 2007).
2 Preliminaries
Consider a system:
( , ) ( , ) x f x u y h x u = = (1)
where
n
x \ denotes the state vector,
m
y \ is the
system output, and
n
u \ is the control input, is said to be
passive if there exists a
1
C storage function ( ) 0 S x such
that:
( ) ( ) S x W x u y +

(2)
for some positive semi-definite function W(x). We say that
(1) is strictly passive if W(x) is positive definite. A static
non-linearity y = h(u) is passive if, for all
n
u \
( ) 0 u y u h u =

(3)
and strictly passive if (3) holds with strict inequality for all
u 0.
3 Problem statement
Consider a fully actuated marine vehicle. Let {I}
be an inertial coordinate frame and {B} a body-fixed
coordinate frame whose origin is located at the centre of
mass of the vehicle. The configuration (R, p) of the
vehicle is an element of the special Euclidean group
3
(3) : (3) , SE SO = \ where:
{ }
3
3
(3) : 3: , ( ) 1 R SO R RR I det R = = = \

is a rotation matrix that describes the orientation of the
vehicle and maps body coordinates into inertial coordinates,
and
3
p \ is the position of the origin of {B} in {I}.
Denoting by
3
\ and
3
\ the linear and angular
velocities of the vehicle relative to {I} expressed in {B},
respectively, the following kinematic relations apply:
( )
R
R RS
=
=
p
(4)
where S is a skew symmetric matrix. We consider the
autonomous marine vehicles with dynamic equations of
motion of the following form (Fossen, 2002):
1
1
1
v u
u
u u u
u v
v
v v v
u v r
r
r r r
m d
u vr u
m m m
m d
v ur v
m m m
m m d
r uv r
m m m
= +
= +
= +
(5)
where u, v and r denote, respectively the surge, sway and
yaw velocities. The positive constant terms m
u
, m
v
, m
r
,
denote the ship inertia including added mass. The positive
constant terms d
u
, d
v
, d
r
, represent the hydrodynamic
damping in surge, sway and yaw. Finally, the control inputs
are the surge force
u
and the sway force
v
and yaw
moment
r
.
For our purpose, we consider a team of n 2 marine
vehicles and a set of n paths
k
; k = 1, 2, , n and require
that the kth vehicle follows path
k
parameterised by its
path variable s
k
with a desired speed assignment defined in
terms of parameters s
k
. We further require that the vehicles
move along the paths in such a way as to maintain a desired
formation pattern along the paths. Having this in mind, the
coordinated path following can be summarised in two folds:
1 the path following problem
2 the coordination problem.
3.1 Path following
To solve the problem of driving a vehicle along a desired
path, the key idea exploited is to make the vehicle
approaching a virtual target that moves along the path with a
desired timing law. An elegant solution was first advanced
at the kinematic level in Samson (1992) for a wheeled
mobile robot, from which the following explanation is
obtained: a path following controller should look at:
1 the distance from the vehicle to the path
2 the angle between the vehicles velocity vector and the
tangent to the path, and reduce both to zero.
This suggests that the kinematic model of the vehicle be
derived with respect to Serret-Frenet frame. However, there
is a catch to this approach. If at any time the vehicle is
located at the origin of the osculating circle, the projected
point on the path will move infinitely fast. Hence, the
Serret-Frenet kinematics contains a singularity at such a
point. Samson (1992) solves this by restricting the position
of the vehicle to be contained inside a tube surrounding the
path, with radius less than a minimum radius derived from
the maximum path curvature. Such a restriction is
obstructing, especially from a theoretical point-of-view, and
effectively excludes the derivation of any global path
following results. The key idea to bypassing the singularity
problem is to add another degree of freedom to the rate of
progression of the virtual target to be tracked along the path.
Formally, this is done by making the centre of the
Serret-Frenet evolving according to an extra virtual control
law. The path following problem can then be formulated as
follows:
Problem 1 (Path following) Given a path (s), develop
feedback control laws for the surge, yaw and
sway forces torque acting on the marine vehicle
so that its centre of mass converges
asymptotically to the path while its total
velocity track remains at a given desired value.
3.2 Coordination
Assuming that a path following controller has been
implemented for each marine vehicle so as to maintain their
motion along a given path. What is remaining is to
coordinate the movement of the team as long as they
propagate along the paths at the same speed. Then they
constitute the centre of the rigid-body formation structure.
Clearly, a coordination algorithm is required in order to
achieve such convergence. The synchronisation essentially
occurs on the one-dimensional manifold that is the path,
and requires coordinating the motion of the virtual
target associated with each vehicle of the team. This
naturally translates into synchronising the involved path
parametrisation variables s
k
, k = 1, , n (Aguiar et al.,
2006). Hence, coordination is achieved when:
, ,
k l k l
s s s s k l = = (6)
The objective of coordination boils down to coordinate
variables s
k
, we will refer to them as coordination states. It
will be required also that the formation as a whole propagate
with a desired velocity while coordinated, that is,
asymptotically .
k c
s v = With this speed assignment one
does not have to specify the actual speed of the vehicles, but
rather those of their coordination states which are equal and
converge asymptotically to v
c
no matter what type of
coordination is under study.
Problem 2 (Coordination) For vehicle : {1,..., } k n = K
derive a control law for the speed command
function of s
k
and s
l
such that each members
parameter achieves in the limit a common
velocity
c
v \ prescribed for the group; that is
lim | | 0
t k c
s v
= and , ,
k l
s s i j K
approach zero as t .
4 Problem solutions
4.1 Path following controller
In our previous work (Ghommam et al., 2009a), we
proposed a solution to the problem of path following control
for underactuated ship that overcomes the singularity
problem related to the stringent condition presented in
(Samson, 1992). The path following controller was designed
using the backstepping technique with adaptive control to
counteract a constant, known direction ocean-current
disturbance, and yields global boundedness and
convergence of the position error to a ball centred at the
origin.
In this section, we apply the results presented in
Ghommam et al. (2009a) to solve the path following
problem. Consider Figure 1, where Q is an arbitrary
point on the path to be followed and P is the centre of
mass of the vehicle that can be expressed either in the
inertial frame {I} as [ , ] x y

or in the Serret-Frenet frame
{F} attached to the point Q as [ , ] .
e e
x y

The parameter s is
a signed distance along the path between Q and an arbitrary
fixed point on the path. The curvature of the path at the
point Q is denoted by (s).
d
denotes the angle between
e
Qx
JJJJG
and ,
B
OX
JJJJJG
B
OX
JJJJJG
and the
vector velocity in the surge direction and
e
=
d
. Let U
denotes the total velocity of the marine vehicle expressed
as:
0
F
B
U u
R
v

=

(7)
where
F
B
R is a rotation matrix from frame {B} to frame
{F}. The norm of the vehicles total velocity is
2 2
| | . U u v = + It is easy to show (Ghommam et al., 2009a)
that the kinematics of the vehicle in the (x
e
, y
e
) coordinates
is given as:
( )
( )
( )
cos 1 ( )
sin ( )
( )
e e e
e e e
e
x U s s y
y U s s x
r s s

=
=
= +

(8)
where
e e

= + is the error angle and is the angle

between the surge velocity and the total velocity of the
vehicle. The overall dynamic combining the error and
motion dynamic of the marine vehicle is given as:
( )
( )
( )
( )
( )
cos 1 ( )
sin ( )
( )
( , , ) , , ,
( , , ) , , ,
1
( , , )
e e e
e e e
e
U U u v
u v
r r
r
x U s s y
y U s s x
r s s
U f U r U
f U r U
r f U r
m

=
=
= +
= +
= +
= +

(9)
where f
U
,
U
, f
are given at the bottom of the page.

Figure 1 Marine vehicle and frame definitions (see online
version for colours)
YB
XB
v
u
U
x
y
P
Q
O
{I}
{F}
{B}
ye
xe

Source: Ghommam et al. (2009a)
Remark 4.1: Notice that the matrix
sin
cos
sin cos
u v
u v
m m
Um Um

is
non-singular since its determinant is m
v
m
U
U then the
transformation between (
U
,
) and (
u
,
r
) always exists.
The problem of path following for the fully actuated marine
vehicle can be summarised as follows: given a path (s)
and a desired profiles for the total velocity and the side slip
angle U
d
and
d
, respectively, find a feedback control law
U
,
and s to drive , , ,
e e e d
x y
and U U
d

asymptotically to zero.
To drive the speed U and the side slip angle to their
desired values, does not require a complicated controller; a
simple feedback linearisation controllers
1
( ) ( , , )
U d d U
k U U U f U r = +

and
2
( ) ( , , )
d d
k f U r

= + (10)
would make the errors U U
d
and
d
converge to zero
exponentially as t . Controlling U and is therefore
decoupled from the control of the other variables, and all
what remains is to find the controller for
r
and s to drive
, ,
e e e
x y
to zero. The first three equations together with the

last one of (8), are in a triangular form which suggests the
use of the backstepping technique found in Khalil (2002) to
derive the appropriate controller that guaranties
convergence of the required error variables to zero. For
convenience, we divide the control design procedure into
two separate stages. Firstly, we consider the first equation of
(9) and choose s as an auxiliary controller to drive the
x
e
-dynamic to zero exponentially. Secondly, the remaining
equations are treated independently from the x
e
-dynamic
and consists to view
e
as a virtual controller to stabilise y

e

then the state variable r as virtual control to stabilise
e

and finally, the control input
r
is determined by direct use
of the backstepping technique. The main result of the path
following controller is given in the following theorem which
proof follows the same line reasoning as in Ghabcheloo
(2007).
2 2
2
2
sin cos
cos sin
cos
sin cos
sin cos
cos sin
sin cos
v u
U
u v
u v
u v
v v u
u u v
u u
u u
ur r
r
r r
U u v u
v
u v
m m
f Ur
m m
d d
U
m m
m m m
f r r
m m m
d d
m m
m d
f U
m m
m m
Um Um

=

+

= +

+

= +

=

(11)
Theorem 4.2: Assume that the path to be followed by the
vehicle is smooth. Let
e
, and be defined as follows:
( )
3
1
4
( ) arcsin
( )
1, 0
sin sin
,
e
e e
e
e
e
e
e
e e
e
e
e
k y
sign U
y d
k s s Uy
if
otherwise

=

+

= + +
=

where k
1
> 0 and k
2
> 0. Let the control input for
r
and s
be given by:
( ) ( ) 5
6
( ) ( , , )
cos
e
r r e r
e e
m k r f U r
s k x U

= +
= +

(12)
where k
4
, k
5
, and k
6
> 0. If the total velocity U satisfies the
following condition:
( )
min , ( )
t
k U d
(13)
where
0 1
3
6 5 4
min( , , ),
d
k
k k k k
+
= then the Problem 1 is
solved. All signals of the closed loop system are bounded.
Particularly the transformed path following errors
(x
e
, y
e
,
e
) = (0, 0, 0) is a semi-globally asymptotically
stable equilibrium point.
Proof: To prove convergence for the equilibrium
(x
e
, y
e
,
e
) = (0, 0, 0), we consider the radially unbounded
Lyapunov function candidate
( )
2
2 2 2
0.5 ( )
e
PF e e e
V x y r

= + + +

its time derivative along the solutions of (9) with the control
laws (12) yields
( )
2
2 2
3 6 5
1
2
4
( ) ( )
e
e
PF e
e
e
y
V k U t k x k r
y d
k

=
+

clearly the time derivative of V
PF
is negative. For any initial
condition, there exists a positive constant
0
and
2
0
0.5
PF
V therefore since 0,
PF
V <
we have | y
e
|
0
,
t t
0
. Consequently,
( )
3
6 5 4
0 1
0 1
3
2min , , , ( )
2 min , ( )
PF PF
PF
k
V k k k U t V
d
d
k U t V
k

+

+

(14)
integrating both sides of (14), results in:
( )
( )
0 1
0
3
2 min , ( )
0
( )
t
t
d
k U d
k
PF
V t V t e

+

since the integral tends to infinity as t , then V
PF
(t)
asymptotically converges to zero and therefore, the
equilibrium (x
e
, y
e
,
e
) = (0, 0, 0) is semi-globally
asymptotically stable, which completes the proof.
4.2 Coordination controller
So far, the path following design established the following
time evolution of the virtual target to be followed by the ith
vehicle:
6
cos
i i ei i ei
s k x U = + (15)
As explained before, the vehicles become asymptotically
synchronised if , , ,
ij i j
s s s i j = K this evidently shows
that s
ij
is a good measure of the along path distances among
the vehicles. In the case of a scaled circumferences,
following (Ghabcheloo et al., 2007) an appropriate measure
of the distances among the vehicles is ,
j
i
i j
s
s
kl
R R
=
without losing generality the dynamic of the new path
parametrisation is:
( )
i
i i
i i
U
R s
= +
(16)
where
1
5
( )
[ (cos 1) ].
i i
i i ei i ei
R s
U k x = + Notice that the
term
i
vanishes asymptotically as the ith vehicle
approaches its path (i.e., t ). For the simplicity of the
analysis that follows, we will assume that
i
= 0. Now
select a virtual vehicle henceforth called leader L that moves
along a straight line, for this vehicle, R
L
(s
L
) = 1. Let v
c
be
the desired constant speed assigned to the leader in advance,
that is .
L c
v =
The vehicles in formation should attain the

speed velocity v
c
once they are in formation. This suggests
the introduction of the following speed tracking error:
( )
i i i i c
U R s v = (17)
whose dynamic equation taking into account the dynamic of
U
i
is:
( ) ( )
i Ui i i c i
d
R s v u
dt
= =
(18)
using (16) and (17), it is easy to show that:
1
i i c
i
v
R
= +
(19)
In summary, the design for the path following of the ith
vehicle lead to a closed-loop system of the form:
1
i i c
i
i i
v
R
u

= +
=
(20)
Our goal will be to design u
i
to synchronise the path
variables
i
while achieving lim | | 0.
t i c
s v
= The design
of u
i
depends on variables of the ith vehicle and the path
parameter of the neighbouring vehicles, in consequence, a
single information will be transmitted from each vehicle. It
is natural then to describe the topology of information
exchange between these vehicles by a graph . G Two
vehicles i and j are neighbours if they have access to the
relative information
i

j
, in which case we let the ith and
jth nodes of the graph be connected by a link. To simplify
our derivations we assign an orientation to the graph by
considering one of the nodes to be the positive end of the
link. For a graph of n nodes and m edges, the n m
incidence matrix ( ) D G is defined as:
1, if th node is the positive end of the th
link
1, if th vertex is the negative end of the th
edge
0, otherwise
ik
i k
d i k
+
(21)
The
i
-dynamic system can be viewed as a subsystem with
input
i
U and output y
i
=
i
/ R
i
. Let the coordination
controller be designed as follows:
1
i i i i
i
u K
R
= U (22)
where
i
U is as proposed in Arcak (2007) given by:
( ) { } i i i i
=

U F (23)
with
( ) ( )
1
m
i i ki i i
i
d
=
=

(24)
and {.}
i
F denotes the output of a static or a dynamic block.
If {.}
i
F is a static block we restrict as in Arcak (2007) to be
of the form:
( )
i i i
y h = U (25)
where :
i
h \ \ is a locally Lipschitz function satisfying
the sector property:
( ) 0, 0
i i i
h > U U U (26)
If {.}
i
F is a dynamic block of the form:
( )
( )
,
,
n
i i i i i
i i i i
f
y h

=
=
\ U
U
(27)
the functions f
i
and h
i
are assumed to be locally Lipschitz
such that h
i
(0, 0) = 0 and (0, ) 0 0,
i i i
f = = U U the main
restriction in Arcak (2007) imposed on (27) is that it must
be strictly passive with a positive definite, radially
unbounded storage function S
i
(
i
) satisfying:
( )
i i i i
S W y +

U
i i k
=
denotes the difference variable and ( )

i i

is
given by:
( ) ( ) i i i i
P =

(28)
where ( )
i i
P

denotes the partial derivative of ( )
i i
P
with
respect to ,
i
with ( )
i i
P
is a differentiable, non-negative,
radially unbounded potential function such that ( )
i i
P

when 0
i

attains its unique minimum when the desired

distance between
i
and
k
is reached. One example of such
potential functions is the following (Rimon and Koditschek,
1992).
( ) ( )
2
2
ln
i i i
i
b
P a
= +

where a and b are some positive constants. It is easy to see
that P
i
attains its unique minimum
( ) ( )
1 ln
b
a
a + when
.
b
i
a
=
It is remarkable that feedback law (22) is

implementable with local information because it depends
only on the neighbours of the ith member.
With u
i
implemented as in (22), the total closed-loop
system is represented as in Figure 2, where
1 2 1 2
, diag( , ,..., ), = diag( , ,..., )
n m
D = =

F F F F
1 2
diag( , ,..., )
n
= and
1 2
diag(1/ ,1/ ,...,1/ ).
n
C R R R =
We will investigate the stability properties of the closed
loop represented in Figure 2, this will be done by
considering passivity properties of the feedforward block
1
H and the feedback block
2
. H The passivity theorem will
guarantee stability of the overall interconnected systems.
The main result for coordination path following is presented
in the following theorem.
Figure 2 Block diagram for the path following coordination
control

Theorem 4.3: Consider the closed loop system represented
as in Figure 2, where the team of the marine vehicles are
interconnected in a formation as described in (21). Let the
coordinated path following control be designed as in (22).
The feedforward block
1
H is passive from
to , and the
feedback block
2
H is passive from to y. In particular, the
origin ( , ) 0 =
is global asymptotic stable.

Proof: We start by proving passivity of the feedforward and
feedback paths in Figure 2. For the feedforward path,
consider the storage function:
0
1
( ) ( )
i k
m
ff k
i
V d

=
=
(29)
Taking the time derivative of (29) will result in:
( )( )
1 1
1
( )
m
ff i i i i i
i
V
+ +
=
=
=
(30)
this shows that the feedforward path is indeed passive from
to . It follows that the path from y to is passive. In

order to show this, substitute ( )
c
D y v = + 1

in (30) and
using the propriety that D1 = 0 and therefore we have:
( )
ff
V y =

(31)
To prove the passivity of the feedback path
2
, H we denote
by I a subset of K for which {.}
i
F are dynamic blocks,
we consider the following storage function:
( )
fb i i
i
V S
I
(32)
where
1
2
( ) .
i i i i
S =

The time derivative of the storage
function V
fb
for the feedback path satisfies:
( ) ,
fb i i i i i
i i
i i i i i
i i
i i i i i i i
i i
V K y
K y y
K y h

+
+
+

I I

I I

I I
U
U U
U U
(33)
since the static blocks satisfy (26), then:
fb i i i
i
V K y

I
(34)
from (34) we conclude that the feedback path is strictly
passive from to y. To conclude about the asymptotic
stability of the equilibrium ( , ) 0, =
we consider the
following Lyapunov function:
ff fb
V V V + + (35)
it is straightforward to see from (31) and (33), that the time
derivative of (35) gives:
( ) ,
i i i i i i i
i i
V K h

=

I I
U U (36)
which is negative semidefinite and implies that
the trajectories ( ( ), ( )) t t
are bounded on the interval

[t
0
, t
0
+ T] for any T within the maximal interval of
existence. Since the speed profile v
c
is bounded, it follows
that ((t), (t)) is bounded and consequently there are no
finite escape times. Thus, the equilibrium ( ( ), ( )) 0 t t =
is
stable. Asymptotic stability of the origin is concluded by
showing the set { , | 0}
n
M V = =

\ is the largest
invariant set containing ( , ) 0. =
This concludes the

proof.
5 Leader following: velocity estimation
So far we assumed that the reference velocity v
c
(t) and its
derivative that we assume it is bounded by a non-negative
constant (i.e., ),
c
v c are available to each member within
the formation team. We now relax this assumption and
consider that the reference velocity v
c
(t) is only known by a
leader in the formation. The followers need to reconstruct
this information by means of an observer in order to achieve
the desired formation. Our observer design employs the
feedback law (22) in Section 4 and modifies (19) as:
1 1
1
1
( )
1
( )
c
i i i
i
v t
R
v t
R

= +
= +
(37)
where ( )
i
v t is the estimate of the reference velocity v
c
(t). It
is obvious that if we can design an observer for ( )
i
v t that
estimates v
c
(t) sufficiently accurately, then the desired
formation is recovered.
We introduce the concatenated vectors:
1 1
,..., ,..., , ,..., ,..., ,
,..., ,...,
i m i m
c c i m
v v v v
= =

=

and denote by [1,1,...,1] = 1

and by
e
v the error variable:
e c c
v v v = 1 (38)
For each follower in the formation to estimate the reference
velocity v
c
(t), we propose the following non-linear observer
( )
1
( )
( ) ( ) ( ) ( )
c
v
K K C K

= +
= + +
(39)
where
( )
( ) ; ( ) K

= is chosen such that the matrix

K() is positive definite for all R
m
. Theorem below
proves that with the observer (39), the states ,
and the
tracking of the reference velocity
c
v are ultimately
asymptotically stable at the origin.
Theorem 5.1: Consider the coordination laws in (37) where
( ) v t is estimated as in (39). With is a stack element of
(24), then there exist feasible initial conditions such that the
states , ,
and the tracking of the reference velocity

e
v are
ultimately asymptotically stable at the origin. Furthermore,
the ultimate bounds of these errors can be made arbitrarily
small by adjusting the adequately the observer gain.
Proof: To prove the stability of the closed-loop system (37)
with the coordinated control law (22) described by the
observer design (39), we exploit the passivity properties of
the interconnected system. To this end, we introduce the
following storage functions, V
ff
, V
fb
and ( )
ob c
V v for the
feedforward, feedback and observer system respectively:
( )
0
1
( ) , ,
1
2
i k
m
ff k fb i i
i i
ob e e
V d V S
V v v

=
= =
=

(40)
The time derivative of the storage function V
ff
using (38) is
straightforward given by:
( )
ff e
V y v = +
(41)
Next, because the feedback block
2
H is passive then
fb
V
is
calculated as in (34). Finally, the time derivative of V
ob

along the solution of (39) is given below:
( )
1
( ) ( ) ( )
2
ob e e e e c
V v K K v v v v t = + + 1

(42)
Using Youngs inequality
1
and since K() is a positive
definite matrix, there exist some positive constants and
> 2 such that:
2
2
1
( 2 ) ( )
4
( 2 )
4
ob e e e c
e e e
V v v v v t
c
v v v

+
+
1

(43)
From (41), (34) and (43), the Lyapunov function:
( ) ( ) , , ( ) ( )
e ff fb ob e
V v V V V v = + + (44)
The time derivative of (44) is given as:
2
( 2 )
4
e e
c
V W v v
(45)
where
( )
1
, .
i i i i i i
i i
W K h

= +

I I
U U
From (45), we conclude that ( , )
and
e
v are ultimately
asymptotically stable at the origin. It is noted that, by
adjusting the matrix K() and therefore, the constant and
by choosing sufficiently large such that > 2, we can
make the ratio
2
4
c
arbitrarily small and therefore, the

bounds of the errors ,
and
e
v are ultimately
asymptotically stable, which completes the proof.
Remark 5.2: Note that the choice for the scalar function ()
which results in the matrix K(), directly affects the
performance of the observer and the stability of the overall
system. The larger eigenvalues of the matrix K(), the faster
will be the convergence of the error states to zero. We also
note that in the case of constant reference velocity v
c
(t), the
errors ,
and
e
v are asymptotically stable.
6 Numerical simulations
To illustrate the performance of the coordination
control scheme proposed for the formation of a team of
fully-actuated marine vehicles. We first present some
computer simulations with the non-observer design in
Subsection 4.2. The simulations are performed with four
vehicles, whose initial positions and orientations are set
randomly. Different coordination control laws are taken in
the form of (22) with the explicit potential function
( ) ( )
2
2
4
10ln
i i i
i
P
= +

This choice of the potential function means that the desired
formation configuration is a parallelepiped. The desired
velocity dynamic along each path is chosen v
c
(t) = 5 m s
1
.
The control gains are chosen k
1i
= 5, k
2i
= 5, k
3i
= 10,
k
4i
= 15, k
5i
= 10, k
6i
= 15 and k
i
= 5. Figure 3 plots
simulation result for sinusoidal formation motion.
It is seen from the figure that the desired formation shape is
nicely achieved and there are no collisions between any
vehicle, besides all ships in the formation nicely track
their reference trajectories. For clarity, only the path
following error position and orientation are plotted in
Figure 4. Indeed, these errors tend to zero asymptotically. It
is noticed from Figure 5 that at the beginning all the
vehicles rapidly move away from each other to avoid
collisions. The distances between different vehicles are
plotted in Figure 6.
Figure 3 Desired and actual vehicles trajectories (see online
version for colours)
0 50 100 150
0
50
Initial formation
shape
Final formation
shape

We now perform a simulation with our observer design in
which v
c
(t) = 5 m s
1
is available only to the leader, (i.e.,
vehicle 1). Vehicles 2, 3 and 4 update
i
c
v according to (39)
and implement (22) with .
i
c
v Figure 7 shows the snapshots
of the formation. The group now exhibits a transactional
motion along the x-axis with a desired speed as shown in
Figure 8, clearly the vehicles maintain the group formation
as expected from Theorem 5.1. In addition, the estimated
velocity convergence is achieved as shown in Figure 9.

Figure 4 Path following errors
0 10 20 30 40 50
25
20
15
10
5
0
5
10
Time [s]
P
a
t
h

f
o
l
l
o
w
i
n
g

e
r
r
o
r
s

x
1
x
d1
y
1
y
d1
e1
1

Figure 5 Convergence of
i
s to the desired velocity dynamic

Figure 6 Distance between different vehicles (see online version
for colours)

Figure 7 Translational motion for the group formation
(see online version for colours)
0 50 100 150
0
50
x[m]
y
[
m
]

Figure 8 Convergence of
i
s to the desired velocity dynamic
with the observer scheme

Figure 9 Velocity convergence with the observer scheme
(see online version for colours)
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
8
6
4
2
0
2
4
6
8
10
Time [s]
e
s
t
i
m
a
t
e
d
v
e
l
o
c
i
t
i
e
s
v
c
i

v
c
2
estimate
v
c
3
estimate
v
c
4
estimate
5 ms
1

7 Conclusions
This paper addressed the problem of coordinating a group of
fully actuated vehicles along a given path, while holding a
desired inter-vehicles formation pattern where the reference
velocity is available to only one vehicle while the others
estimate this information with an observer design. A
solution was proposed that built on recent results on
path following (Ghabcheloo et al., 2007), coordination
passivity-based design (Arcak, 2007) and new observer
scheme. Numerical simulations illustrated the efficiency of
the proposed solution. Further work is required to extend the
methodology proposed to address the problems of discreet
implementation of the proposed control design. An
application of the proposed control design method
combined with the control design technique for single
underactuated ship in Ghommam et al. (2009a) to achieve a
desired formation for a group of underactuated ship will be
reported elsewhere.
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Notes
1 For any a and b in ,
n
\ and for any positive real number ,
we have (1/ 4 ) . a b a a b b +

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, VOL. 56, NO. 10, OCTOBER 2009 3951
Coordinated Path-Following Control for a Group
of Underactuated Surface Vessels
Jawhar Ghommam, Member, IEEE, and Faal Mnif, Senior Member, IEEE
AbstractThis paper addresses the problem of coordinating a
group of underactuated ships along given paths (path following)
while holding a desired intership formation pattern. The solution
to this problem unfolds into two basic subproblems. In the rst
step, a path-following controller is derived to force each underac-
tuated ship to follow a reference path subject to constant distur-
bances induced by wave, wind, and ocean current. The controller
is designed such that the ship moves on the path while its total
velocity is maintained tangential to the path. In the second step,
the speeds of the vehicles are adjusted so as to synchronize the
positions of the corresponding virtual targets (or so-called coordi-
nation states), in the sense that the derivative of each path is left as
a free input to synchronize the ships motion. The proposed coor-
dination controller uses a combination of Lyapunov direct method,
backstepping, and concepts from graph theory. When dealing with
the path-following coordination problem, it is considered that each
ship transmits its coordination state to other ships with a varying
time delay as determined by the communication topology. The
coordination errors convergence is achieved based on a proposed
LyapunovKrasovskii function. Simulation results are provided to
illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.
Index TermsBackstepping technique, coordination control,
graph theory, Lyapunov theory, path following, time delay,
underactuated ships.
I. INTRODUCTION
R
ECENT years have seen a large and growing litera-
ture concerned with the coordination of a group of
autonomous agents, partly due to a broad application of multi-
agent systems, including ocking/swarming [53], [60], forma-
tion control [26], [42], and sensor networks [19]. At present,
relevant applications utilizing formation control can be found in
the sea, on land, and in the air. While each of these areas poses
its own challenges, several common threads can be found, and
in most cases, the agents (vehicles) are dynamically decoupled
in the sense that the motion of one does not directly affect the
others. Instead, the vehicles are coupled through joint tasks.
These tasks must be accomplished in the presence of nontrivial
vehicle dynamics. Decisions must be made by each vehicle
using only limited information about the other vehicles which
may be subject to uncertainty and transmission delays. The
Manuscript received May 15, 2008; revised July 15, 2009. First published
August 4, 2009; current version published September 16, 2009.
J. Ghommam is with the Research Unit on Mechatronics and Autonomous
Systems, Ecole Nationale dIngnieurs de Sfax, 3038 Sfax, Tunisia (e-mail:
jawhar.ghommam@ieee.org).
F. Mnif is with Sultan Qaboos University, 123 Muscat, Oman, and also with
the Research Unit on Mechatronics and Autonomous Systems, Ecole Nationale
dIngnieurs de Sfax, 3038 Sfax, Tunisia (e-mail: mnif@squ.edu.om).
Color versions of one or more of the gures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identier 10.1109/TIE.2009.2028362
reaction of a vehicle on other vehicles motion renders the
formation an interconnected dynamical system whose behavior
depends not only on the individual vehicle dynamics but also
on the nature of the interconnection group.
Research within formation control can be divided into two
main categories: analytical and algorithmic. The analytical-
category groups approaches that are most readily analyzed
by mathematical tools, including both leaderfollower meth-
ods and virtual-structure methods. The algorithmic category
represents approaches that have to be numerically simulated
by means of a computer in order to investigate their emer-
gent behavior. The behavior-based methods belong to this
last category. Each of the earlier approaches has its own
features.
In the leaderfollower approach [18], [20], [44], [46], [61],
[62], some vehicles are considered as leaders, while the rest
act as followers. The leaders track predened reference tra-
jectories; on the other hand, the followers track transformed
versions of the states of their nearest neighbors according to
given schemes. This approach is easy to be manipulated and
implemented. In addition, the formation can still be maintained
even if the leader is subjected to a class of disturbances. Perhaps
the main criticism related to the leaderfollower approach is
that it depends heavily on the leader for achieving the goal
and overrelies on a single agent in the formation which may
be undesirable.
The virtual-structure approach is introduced in [41], where
each formation member is viewed as equivalent to a particle
embedded in a rigid geometric structure. In [47], a formation
function is proposed as a measure of the formation mainte-
nance. In [24], the formation-control problem is decoupled into
a planning problem and a tracking problem. In the virtual-
structure approach, it is fairly easy to prescribe the coordinated
behavior for the group, and the formation can be maintained
very well during the maneuvers. In other words, the virtual
structure can evolve as a whole in a given direction with
some given orientation and maintain a rigid geometric rela-
tionship among multiple vehicles. However, if the formation
has to maintain exactly the same virtual structure at all times,
the potential applications are limited particularly when the
formation shape is time-varying or needs to be frequently
recongured.
In the behavioral approach [7], [10], [40], [43], [51], few
desired behaviors such as collision/obstacle avoidance and
goal/target seeking are prescribed for each vehicle, and the
formation control is calculated from a weighting of the relative
importance of each behavior. In this approach, it is natural to de-
rive control strategies when vehicles have multiple competing
0278-0046/$26.00 2009 IEEE
3952 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, VOL. 56, NO. 10, OCTOBER 2009
objectives, and an explicit feedback is included through com-
munication among neighbors. However, the group behavior
cannot be explicitly dened, and it is difcult to analyze the
approach mathematically and guarantee the stability of the
group.
In the earlier papers, authors considered fully actuated dy-
namics for the vehicles in formation. Underactuated dynamics
exhibit nonintegrable acceleration constraints, and therefore,
they could not be transformed into driftless chained form [9],
[17], [35], [36], [52]. In such a case, the tracking algorithm
presented in [12] and [37] and those presented for formation
control cited earlier cannot be directly applied to the tracking of
these underactuated vehicles. The trajectory-tracking and path-
following-control problem of nonlinear underactuated ships
have been extensively studied in [2], [11], [16], [22], [29], [49],
[50], [54], [59], and the references therein. Recently, the marine
control community has started focusing on formation control
of underactuated marine vehicles. In the literature, few results,
mostly from the leaderfollower framework, appeared. In [25],
formation control of underactuated surface vessel has been
conducted using local information to achieve mesh stability.
In [14], formation control of underactuated surface vessels
moving along straight lines is considered. In [13], a nonlinear-
coordination-control scheme for formation control of a group of
underactuated marine vehicles with communication-topology
constraints both in bidirectional and unidirectional communi-
cation links is considered. Relevant work on coordinated path-
following control of multiple mobile robots was presented in
[32]; the concept was later applied to formation control of
underactuated autonomous vehicles in [5] and autonomous
underwater vehicles in [30]. The solutions adopted are rooted in
Lyapunov-based theory and graph theory to address explicitly
the vehicle dynamics as well as the constraints imposed by the
topology of the intervehicle communications network. In [8],
Arrichiello et al. considered behavioral methods for formation
control of underactuated marine vessels while avoiding colli-
sion with environmental obstacles.
In the earlier papers addressing the coordination problem of
a group of underactuated marine vehicles, the dynamic model
of each of the marine vehicle is assumed to be free from
environmental disturbances, and intercommunication among
vehicles takes place without transmission delay. Inspired by
the progress in the eld, this paper deals with the problem of
formation control for a eet of underactuated marine vehicles
under constant and known direction ocean-current disturbances.
Particularly, we consider the problem of coordinated path fol-
lowing where vehicles are required to follow some specied
paths while keeping an in-line formation. The primary objective
in path-following problems is to design a control input that
forces the vehicle to follow a prescribed path, parameterized
by a path variable . The secondary objective is to assign a
desired speed

once the vehicle is on the path [1], [2], [6], [16],
[21]. In the classical trajectory-tracking problem, however, the
path variable is designed to follow a specic time function,
such that the vehicle tracks a time-dependent reference signal.
However, a fundamental difference between the two approaches
is that performance limitations due to unstable zero dynamics
can be removed in the path-following problem [1], [3], [4].
Therefore, smoother convergence is guaranteed, and control
signals are less likely to be pushed into saturation, when
compared to trajectory tracking. The path-following method
seems to be more suitable for practical implementation than
trajectory tracking. Therefore, we rstly address the path-
following problem of one vehicle, where the problem consists
in forcing the underactuated ship to move on a predened
path while guaranteeing a conveniently predened error to
converge to zero. On the other hand, the total linear velocity
is maintained tangential to the path, and its forward speed
can be assigned online as in [22]. Then, the synchronization
technique is combined with the nonlinear controller designed
for a single vehicle to obtain a formation-control algorithm for
the coordination of multiple vehicles. Vehicle coordination is
achieved by adjusting the speed of each vehicle along its path
according to the information of the position and speed of a
subset of the other vehicles. We particularly show how the path-
following-control problem of an underactuated surface vessel
can be extended to cooperative control of multiple underac-
tuated vehicles. This in fact constitutes one main contribution
of this paper. Because of possible network faults, the problem
brought about by temporary communication delays is then
addressed. To tackle this problem, we introduce a linear-matrix-
inequality (LMI) method. Consequently, we prove that the
group of underactuated ships can synchronize asymptotically
for appropriate time-varying delays if the intercommunication
topology is connected. This is what constitutes the second main
contribution of this paper. The results presented in this paper
rely on a feasible LMI, from which the maximal allowable
upper bound of time-varying communication delays can be
easily obtained by using MATLABs LMI Toolbox.
This paper is organized as follows. The underactuated-
surface-vessel model and control-problem statement are pre-
sented in the next section. In Section III, the design of the
controller for the path following of an individual ship is de-
rived. Robustness discussion of our proposed controllers is then
presented. Section IV studies the coordinated path-following
problem and gives a general solution for the coordination
problem. The effect of time delay is also analyzed. Simulations
illustrating synchronization of three underactuated surface ves-
sels are presented in Section V. Finally, the conclusion and new
research directions are presented in Section VI.
II. PROBLEM STATEMENT
A. Formation Setup
In the most general setup of the formation-control problem,
we are given a set of n marine vehicles with a set of n paths,
and we require that each vehicle follows a geometric path
i
(
i
) continuously parameterized by a scalar variable
i
R.
Furthermore, we require that the vehicles move along their
path in such a way as to maintain an in-line formation. In
the simplest case, the path
i
(
i
) may be obtained as a simple
translation of a template or reference path (
0
) (Fig. 1).
Assuming that individual controller for path following has
been implemented for each vehicle, it remains necessary to
synchronize the vehicle motions on time so as to achieve
GHOMMAM AND MNIF: COORDINATED PATH-FOLLOWING CONTROL FOR SURFACE VESSELS 3953
Fig. 1. Formation setup for four vessels.
Fig. 2. Block diagram for coordinated path-following control system.
the formation requirement. In order to solve this problem, a
common approach to path-following synchronization is used
[23], [57] and can be divided into the following tasks: 1) a
motion-control task, to be solved individually for every vehi-
cle, each having access to a set of local measurements, and
2) a dynamic-assignment task, consisting of synchronizing the
parameterization states that capture the along-path distances
between the vehicles. This strategy results in decoupling the
path following and the intervehicle coordination. A conceptual
block diagram for the general coordinated path-following con-
trol system presented in this paper is shown in Fig. 2.
B. Underactuated Ship Dynamics
We consider an underactuated surface vessel that possess two
independent thrusters in order to provide surge force and yaw
moment as common thruster conguration for marine surface
vessels such as in [27]. In this conguration, the control vectors
dimension is less than the degrees of freedom. The vessel is thus
underactuated, and the lateral position (sway direction) cannot
be directly controlled. To avoid the yaw moment acting directly
Fig. 3. Interpretation of path-following errors.
on the sway dynamics, we choose the body-xed-frame origin
such that it is on the centerline of the ship (see Fig. 3). The
equations of motion for the ith marine vessel in the body-xed
frame are

i
=J(
i
)
i
(1)
M
i
i
= C(
i
)
i
i
D
i
i
+
i
+J(
i
)
T
ci
,
M
i
=
m
11i
0 0
0 m
22i
m
23i
0 m
32i
m
33i
D
i
=
d
11i
0 0
0 d
22i
d
23i
0 d
32i
d
33i
J(
i
) =
cos(
i
) sin(
i
) 0
sin(
i
) cos(
i
) 0
0 0 1
C
i
=
0 0 C
13i
0 0 C
23i
C
13i
C
23i
0
,
C
13i
= m
22i
v
i

1
2
(m
23i
+m
32i
)r
i
C
23i
=m
11i
u
i
(2)
where
i
= [
ui
, 0,
ri
]
T
is the control input for the ith ship, the
vector
ci
= [
cu
i
,
cv
i
,
cr
i
]
T
represents a constant (or slowly
varying) unknown bias due to external environmental forces,
i
= [x
i
, y
i
,
i
]
T
is the ith earth-xed position vector, (x
i
, y
i
)
is the ith position on the ocean surface,
i
is the ith heading
angle (yaw), and
i
= [u
i
, v
i
, r
i
]
T
is the ith body-xed veloc-
ity vector. The model matrices M
i
= M
T
i
> 0, C
i
, and D
i
denote, respectively, the inertia matrix, the Coriolis plus cen-
trifugal term matrix, and the damping matrix. J(
i
) SO(3)
is the rotation matrix between the body and earth coordinate
frame.
C. Control Objectives
To simplify the control design for the formation control, we
assume that all the states are accessible by direct measurement.
Moreover, we suppose that the reference template is sufciently
smooth. The set of vehicles in the formation is said to be
assembled when all of them have converged with each other
and propagate along the path at the same speed. Under the
Assumptions, the formation-control objective is to design a
control law
i
and

i
such that all the closed-loop signals
are bounded. The position of each vehicle converges to and
remains on the desired path; all the path parameterization vari-
ables
i
, i I synchronize. The formation is assembled in the
sense that
lim
t
i
(t)
di
(
i
(t)) =
i
, |
i
| < 0.5 (3)
lim
t
|
i
(t)
j
(t)| =0 i, j I. (4)
Assumptions: The following assumptions are made through-
out this paper.
A1 The desired geometric path is regularly parameter-
ized, i.e.,
0 <
_
x
i
di
(
i
)
2
+y
i
di
(
i
)
2

i
R
where we denote by ()
i
= (()/
i
) and ()
2
i
=
(
2
()/
2
i
).
A2 The speed of the ith ship along its own path is positive
and lower bounded, i.e.,
u
d
0i
[u
d
0i,min
, u
d
0i,max
] t 0.
A3 The disturbance forces are unknown but lie in a known
compact set, i.e., there exist known positive con-
stants
M
cu
i
,
M
cv
i
, and
M
cr
i
such that
|
cu
i
|
M
cu
i
|
cv
i
|
M
cv
i
|
cr
i
|
M
cr
i
.
Remark 1: The rst objective (3) means that each vehicle
should converge to its path and moves along it with a tangen-
tial linear velocity, while the second objective (4) assures the
synchronization of all the path parameters.
III. PATH FOLLOWING AND CONTROL DESIGN
A. Error Path Tracking
To prepare for the control design, we rst interpret the
path-tracking errors for each member of the formation (x
i

x
di
, y
i
y
di
,
i

di
) in the frame (O
bi
, X
bi
, Y
bi
) [22], [23]
(see Fig. 3) of which the origin O
bi
is a point on the path
i
(
i
).
The axes O
bi
X
bi
and O
bi
Y
bi
are parallel to the surge and sway
axes of the ship, respectively. As it is shown in Fig. 3, the
surge direction of the ship is tangent to the path
i
(
i
). The
path-following errors in a frame attached to the path
i
(
i
) are
therefore given as
x
ei
y
ei
ei
= J
T
(
i
)
x
i
x
di
y
i
y
di
i

di
(5)
where
di
is the angle between the path and the X-axis and is
dened by
di
= arctan
_
y
i
di
x
i
di
_
. (6)
We refer to x
ei
, y
ei
,
ei
as the cross errors and the heading
errors, respectively. Differentiating both sides of (5) along the
solution of (1) and (2) results in the following kinematic-error
dynamics:
x
ei
=u
i
u
di
cos(
ei
) +r
i
y
ei
y
ei
=v
i
+u
di
sin(
ei
) r
i
x
ei
ei
=r
i
r
di
(7)
where we have dened
u
di
=
_
x
i
di
(
i
)
2
+y
i
di
(
i
)
2
i
:= u
di

i
(8)
r
di
=
x
i
di
(
i
)y
2
i
di
(
i
) x
2
i
di
(
i
)y
i
di
(
i
)
x
i
di
(
i
)
2
+y
i
di
(
i
)
2
i
:= r
di

i
. (9)
Expressions (8) and (9) denote the desired linear and angular
velocities of the ship on the path. It is noted that the speed of
the each ship of the formation on the path
i
(
i
) is specied by
i
. The earlier kinematic error with the dynamic equation (2)
allows us to write the overall ith ships dynamic as
x
ei
=u
i
u
di
cos(
ei
) +r
i
y
ei
y
ei
=v
i
+u
di
sin(
ei
) r
i
x
ei
ei
=r
i
r
di
u
i
=
ui
+
cu
i
v
i
= a
i
v
i
b
i
u
i
r
i
+c
i
r
i
+
cv
i
r
i
=
ri
+
cr
i
(10)
where we have chosen primary controls
ui
=m
11i

ui
m
22i
v
i
r
i

1
2
(m
23i
+m
32i
)r
2
i
+d
11i
u
i
r
i
=
(m
22i
m
33i
m
23i
m
32i
)
m
22i

ri
_
_
m
11i
m
22i
m
2
22i
_
u
i
v
i
+
_
m
11i
m
32i

1
2
m
22i
(m
23i
+m
32i
)
_
u
i
r
i
+ (m
32i
d
22i
m
22i
d
32i
)v
i
(m
22i
d
33i
m
32i
d
23i
)r
i
_
/m
22i
where
ui
and
ri
are considered as new controls to be designed
later
a
i
=
m
11i
m
22i
b
i
=
d
22i
m
22i
c
i
=
d
22i
m
23i
m
2
22i
d
23i
m
22i

cu
i
=m
1
11i
(sin(
i
)
cv
i
+ cos(
i
)
cu
i
)

cv
i
=m
1
22i
(sin(
i
)
cu
i
+ cos(
i
)
cv
i
)

cr
i
=f
1
i
(m
22i
cr
i
+m
32i
(cos()
cv
i
+ sin()
cu
i
))
f
i
=m
22i
m
33i
m
22i
m
32i
.
We have thus converted the path following of the ith ship to
a problem of regulating the rst three dynamics of (10) to the
origin by making use of the control input
ui
and
ri
.
B. Control Design
The structure of (10) is in triangular form which suggests the
use of the adaptive backstepping technique [28], [39], [45] in
four steps. It is worth noticing that we can use u
i
as a control
law to stabilize x
ei
. The stabilization of y
ei
is however more
involved. We cannot directly use
ei
to cancel v
i
, since the
term u
di
sin(
ei
) cannot cancel v
i
without restriction on the
initial conditions as stated in [22]. One way to stabilize y
ei
is to use the path derivative as an additional control variable.
However, this technique could not be directly applied, since we
need to use the path derivative variable as input to synchronize
the formation motion. In order to overcome this difculty, we
dene the following variable:
i
=
i
(
i
, t)

i
(11)
where
i
is the speed assignment for the individual vessel on
the path. Throughout this paper, we assume that the path and
speed assignment
i
(
i
),
i
(
i
, t) are uniformly bounded. To
be able to stabilize the y
ei
dynamic, we make use of
i
as an
intermediate control variable in the design in such a way that it
guarantees the desired surge velocity when the individual vessel
is on the path, and dominates v
i
. To prepare for the control law,
we dene the following variables:
u
ei
= u
i

ui

ei
=
ei

ei
r
ei
= r
i

ri
(12)
where
ui
,
ei
, and
r
i
are some virtual controls to be
specied later. The design procedure is carried out in four steps.
Starting with the x
ei
dynamic as follows.
Step 1: Stabilizing the x
ei
dynamic. Replacing the rst two
expressions of (12) into the rst equation of (10) and using (11),
we obtain
x
ei
= u
ei
+
ui
u
di
cos(
ei
) +r
i
y
ei
+u
di
1i
(13)
where
1i
=((cos(

ei
)1) cos(
ei
)sin(

ei
) sin(
ei
))).
Using (8), the above expression is rewritten as
x
ei
= u
ei
+
ui
u
di
(
i
(
i
, t)
i
) cos(
ei
)
+ r
i
y
ei
+u
di
1i
(14)
then choosing the virtual-control law
ui
as
ui
=
1i
+ u
di
i
(
i
, t) cos(
ei
) (15)
with
1i
= (k
1i
x
ei
/
1i
), k
1i
> 0, and
i
=
_
1 +x
2
ei
+y
2
ei
,
results in
x
ei
=
1i
+u
ei
+r
i
y
ei
+
1i
u
di
i
(
i
, t) +
1i
i
(16)
where we have dened
1i
= u
di
cos(
ei
)
1i
u
di
.
Step 2: Stabilizing the y
ei
dynamic. Dene the virtual con-
trol
ei
as
ei
= arctan
_
2i
+v
i
u
d
0i
_
(17)
where
2i
= (k
2i
y
ei
/
1i
); k
2i
> 0. Substituting the second
equation of (12) into the second equation of (10) results in
y
ei
= v
i
+ u
di
i
(
i
, t) sin(
ei
) r
i
x
ei
+
2i
u
di
(
i
, t) +
2i
i
(18)
where
2i
= (sin(

ei
) cos(
ei
) + (cos(

ei
) 1) sin(
ei
))
and
2i
= u
di
sin(
ei
)
2i
u
di
. With the expression of
ei
in (17) and by choosing
i
(
i
, t) as follows:
i
(
i
, t) =
_
u
2
d
0i
+ (
2i
+v
i
)
2
u
di
(19)
(18) is rewritten as
y
ei
=
2i
r
i
x
ei
+
2i
u
di
(
i
, t) +
2i
i
. (20)
Step 3: Stabilizing the

ei
dynamic. Differentiating both
sides of the second equation of (12) along the solutions of (17)
and the three rst equations of (10) gives
ei
=r
i
r
di

u
d
0i
(
2i
+v
i
)
u
2
di
i
(
i
, t)
2
+
k
2i
u
d
0i
u
2
di
i
(
i
, t)
2
3
i
_ _
1 +x
2
ei
_
(
2i
+
2i
u
di
i
(
i
, t)) x
ei
y
ei
(
1i
+
1i
u
di
i
(
i
, t))
k
2i
u
d
0i
x
ei
y
ei
u
ei
u
2
di
i
(
i
, t)
2
3
i
k
2i
u
d
0i
x
ei
u
2
di
i
(
i
, t)
2
3
i
r
i
+
u
d
0i
u
2
di
i
(
i
, t)
2
_
a
i
v
i
b
i
u
i
r
i
+c
i
r
i
+m
1
22i
(sin(
i
)
cu
i
+ cos(
i
)
cv
i
)
+
3i
i
(21)
with
3i
=(k
2i
u
d
0i
/ u
2
di
i
(
i
, t)
2
3
i
)[
1i
(1+x
2
ei
)
2i
x
ei
y
ei
].
It is now clear that we can choose r
i
as a virtual controller to
stabilize

ei
. Substituting the last equation of (12) in (21) and
selecting
ri
as
ri
=
1
d
1i
_
k
3i

ei
+ r
di
i
(
i
, t)
+
u
d
0i
(
2i
+v
i
)
u
2
di
i
(
i
, t)
2

k
2i
u
d
0i
u
2
di
i
(
i
, t)
2
3
i
_ _
1 +x
2
ei
_
(
2i
+
2i
u
di
i
)
x
ei
y
ei
(
1i
+
1i
u
di
i
(
i
, t))
+
a
i
v
i
u
d
0i
u
2
di
i
(
i
, t)
2
m
1
22i
(sin(
i
)
cu
i
+ cos(
i
)
cv
i
)
_
(22)
where k
3i
is a positive constant and
d
1i
=
_
1
k
2i
u
d
0i
x
ei
u
2
di
i
(
i
, t)
2
3
i
+
u
d
0i
(c
i
b
i
ui
)
u
2
di
i
(
i
, t)
2
_
. (23)
The estimates
cu
i
and
cv
i
will be updated later. From (23), in
order to guarantee that d
1i
= 0, we select the design constant
k
2i
such that
k
2i
b
i
u
d
0i
+

2i
+v
i
u
d
0
i
since u
d
0i
,
2i
are bounded, v
i
should also be guaranteed to
be bounded via the control design. Consequently, the controller
parameter k
2i
can be taken as follows:
k
2i
min(u
d
0i
) +
i
(24)
where
i
is a positive constant.
Substituting (22) and the last equation of (12) into (21)
results in
ei
= k
3i

ei
+d
1i
r
ei
+d
2i
u
ei
+
4i
i
+m
1
22i
(sin(
i
)
cu
i
+ cos(
i
)
cv
i
) (25)
where () = () () denotes the error estimates and
4i
=
3i
+ r
di
and
d
2i
=
_
u
d
0i
b
i
u
2
di
i
(
i
, t)
2
+
k
2i
u
d
0i
x
ei
y
ei
u
2
di
i
(
i
, t)
2
3
i
_
.
Step 4: Differentiating both sides of the rst equation of
(12) along the solutions of the rst two equations and the fth
equation of (10) allows us to select the control
ui
as
ui
= m
1
11i
_
k
4i
u
ei
+k
5i
r
2
i
u
ei
+d
11i
ui
+d
2i

ei
m
22i
v
i
r
i
+
u
d
0i
ui
u
d
0i
+
x
ei
ui
(u
i
u
di
i
cos(
ei
) +r
i
y
ei
)
+
y
ei
ui
(v
i
+ u
di
i
sin(
ei
) r
i
x
ei
)
sin(
i
)
cv
i
cos(
i
)
cu
i
(26)
where k
4i
and k
5i
are positive constants. With (26), we have the
u
ei
dynamics as
u
ei
= (k
4i
+d
11i
)u
ei
k
5i
r
2
i
u
ei
d
2i

ei
+
5i
i
+ sin(
i
)
cv
i
+ cos(
i
)
cu
i
(27)
where
5i
= (
x
ei
ui
+
y
ei
ui
) u
di
. Before designing
ri
, we note
that the virtual control
ri
is a smooth function of x
ei
, y
ei
,
ei
,
u
d
0i
, u
d
0i
,
cu
i
,
cv
i
, and
i
. Differentiating the last equation
of (12) along the solutions of (10), then control input
ri
can
therefore be chosen as
ri
=m
22i
f
1
i
_
k
6i
r
ei
d
1i

ei
+

cu
i
ri

cu
i
+

cv
i
ri

cv
i
+
u
d
0i
ri
u
d
0i
+
u
d
0i
ri
u
d
0i
+
i
ri
i
+
x
ei
ri
(u
i
u
di
i
cos(
ei
) +r
i
y
ei
)
+
y
ei
ri
(v
i
+ u
di
i
sin(
ei
) +r
i
x
ei
)
+
ei
ri
(r
i
r
di
i
)
_
_
m
11i
m
22i
m
2
22i
_
u
i
v
i
+
_
m
11i
m
32i

1
2
m
22i
(m
23i
+m
32i
)
_
u
i
r
i
+ (m
32i
d
22i
m
22i
d
32i
)v
i
(m
22i
d
33i
m
32i
d
23i
)
ri
_
/m
22i

cr
i
+m
32i
(cos()
cv
i
sin()
cu
i
)
_
.
(28)
With (28), we have the r
ei
dynamics as
r
ei
=
_
k
6i
+
_
d
33i

m
32i
m
22i
d
23i
__
r
ei
d
1i

ei
+
cr
i
m
32i
(cos()
cv
i
sin()
cu
i
) +
6i
i
(29)
where
6i
= (
x
ei
ri
+
y
ei
ri
+
ei
ri
) u
di
+
i
ri
. The estimates

cu
i
,
cv
i
, and
cr
i
are updated as follows:

cu
i
=
1i
_
m
1
22i
ei
sin()+u
ei
cos(
i
)+m
32i
r
ei
sin()
_

cv
i
=
2i
_
m
1
22i
ei
cos()+u
ei
sin()m
32i
r
ei
cos()
_

cr
i
=
3i
r
ei
(30)
where
ji
, j = 1, . . . , 3, are positive constants. With the earlier
control design, the closed-loop dynamics is rewritten as
x
ei
=
1i
+u
ei
+r
i
y
ei
+
1i
u
di
i
(
i
, t) +
1i
i
y
ei
=
2i
r
i
x
ei
+
2i
u
di
(
i
, t) +
2i
ei
= k
3i

ei
+d
1i
r
ei
+d
2i
u
ei
+
4i
i
+m
1
22i
(sin(
i
)
cu
i
+ cos(
i
)
cv
i
)
u
ei
= (k
4i
+d
11i
)u
ei
k
5i
r
2
i
u
ei
d
2i

ei
+
5i
i
+ sin(
i
)
cv
i
+ cos(
i
)
cu
i
r
ei
=
_
k
6i
+
_
d
33i

m
32i
m
22i
d
23i
__
r
ei
d
1i

ei
+
cr
i
m
32i
(cos()
cv
i
sin()
cu
i
) +
6i
i
v
i
= a
i
v
i
b
i
u
i
r
i
+c
i
r
i
+
cv
i
i
=
i
(
i
, t)
i
. (31)
We can now state our main result on path following in the
following theorem with its proof given in the Appendix.
Theorem 3.1: Given a smooth parameterized path
i
(
i
) for
each underactuated ship of the group, let the feedback term
i
be designed like in [55] as follows:
i
=
i
(
i
, t)
i

i
=
i
i

i
i
(32)
where
i
and
i
are constant gains,
i
=
5i
u
ei
+
6i
r
ei
+
4i

ei
+ ((
1i
x
ei
/
1i
) + (
2i
x
ei
/
1i
)), then the control law
ui
and
ri
given by (26) and (28) and the adaptation laws
given by (30) solve the path-following-control problem (3).
All signals of the closed-loop system (31) are bounded. In
particular, the path-following error (x
ei
, y
ei
,

ei
) asymptoti-
cally converges to zero. As a result, the actual path-following
position (x
i
x
di
, y
i
y
di
) and
di
converge to zero and
a ball of a radius less than 0.5, respectively.
Remark 2: The control law (26)(28) and the update laws
(30) have been designed under the assumptions that the ships
mass and added mass and linear damping coefcients are deter-
mined quite accurately. Indeed, these assumptions are unreal-
istic in practice (see [56] for discussion). The path-following
controller can be modied to account for the inaccurate
knowledge of the ships parameters affecting the dynamics
(10). We can modify the control law obtained previously into an
adaptive one, using the framework introduced in [39] and [45].
Moreover, this would result in ultimately uniformly bound-
edness of the state (x
ei
, y
ei
,
ei
) that is the position of each
vehicle converges to and remains inside a tube centered on the
desired path.
IV. COORDINATED CONTROLLER
Cooperative control strategies for multiple vehicles are sup-
ported by the communications network over which the vehicles
exchange motion-state information. The communication net-
work topology must be then addressed explicitly. It is therefore
natural to model information exchange among vehicles by
directed/undirected graphs. This section details the develop-
ment of the coordination controller subsystem. To this end,
we rst recall some key concepts from the algebraic graph
theory [33].
A. Notations in Graph Theory
Let G = (V, E, A) be a weighted undirected graph of order
n with a set of nodes V = {1, 2, . . . , n}, set of edges E
V V, and a weighted adjacency matrix A = [a
ij
] R
nn
with nonnegative elements. The node indexes belong to a nite
index set I = {1, 2, . . . , n}. An edge is denoted by (i, j), which
means that node i and node j are adjacent. A path from i
to j in G is a sequence of distinct nodes starting with i and
ending with j such that the consecutive nodes are adjacent. If
there is a path between any two nodes of a graph G, then G is
connected; otherwise, it is disconnected. An induced subgraph
X of G that is maximal, subject to being connected, is called a
component of G. The element a
ij
associated with the edge of
the graph is positive, i.e., a
ij
> 0 (i, j) E. Moreover, we
assume that a
ii
= 0 for all i I. The set of neighbors of node
i is denoted by N
i
= {j V : (i, j) E}. A diagonal matrix
D = diag{d
1
, . . . , d
n
} R
nn
is a degree matrix of G, whose
diagonal elements d
i
=

jN
i
a
ij
for i = 1, . . . , n. Then, the
Laplacian of the weighted graph G is dened as L = D A
R
nn
. The following result is well known in algebraic graph
theory (e.g., [33]) and establishes a direct relationship between
the graph connectivity and its Laplacian.
Lemma 1 [33]: Let D and A be the degree matrix and the
adjacency matrix of an undirect graph G, respectively. If is an
arbitrary orientation of G and Mis the incidence matrix of G,
then L = D A = MM
T
, where Mis on the order of n m
and its kl entries are
m
kl
=
_
+1, if V
k
is the head of arc l
1, if V
k
is the tail of arc l
0, otherwise.
B. Coordinated Path Following
In the proof of Theorem 3.1, the feedback term
i
is designed
to ensure convergence of each vehicle to its path with given
desired dynamic. For the formation-control problem, however,
it is necessary to ensure the coordination of the path vari-
ables
i
as to satisfy the speed assignment. Consider now the
coordination-control problem with a communication topology
dened by a graph G. Using a Lyapunov-based design, we
propose a decentralized feedback law for
i
as a function of
the information obtained from the neighboring agents. To make
the presentation clearer, we use the vector notation = [
i
]
n1
,
= [
i
]
n1
, and = [
i
]
n1
, (11) is rewritten as
= . (33)
The time derivative of the total Lyapunov function for n ships
according to (47) is
V
T

T

n
i=1
_
_
k
1i

i
u
2
di
2
i
_
x
2
ei
+
_
k
2i

i
u
2
di
2
i
_
y
2
ei
+
_
k
3i

0.5
i
_

2
ei
+ (k
4i
+d
11i
)u
2
ei
+
_
k
6i
+
_
d
33i

m
32i
m
22i
d
23i
__
r
2
ei
_
(34)
where = [
i
]
n1
. Following [32], we let
= K
1
1

T
L1 +K
1
1
(L +) z (35)
where 1 = [1]
n1
, L is the Laplacian matrix of the underlying
communication graph as described in Section IV-A, and z is an
auxiliary state governed by
z = (K
1
+K
2
)z +L + +
T
L1 (36)
where K
1
and K
2
are diagonal positive-denite matrices. The
closed-loop coordination system is therefore given by
z = (K
1
+K
2
)z +L + +
T
L1
= +z K
1
1
L K
1
1
K
1
1

T
L1. (37)
We can now state our main result on the problem of coordinated
path-following problem (3) and (4) in the following theorem.
Theorem 4.1: Consider a formation of n vehicles each
guided by the motion-control laws (26), (28), and (30) along
a path parameterized by
i
, and let L be the Laplacian of a con-
nected graph G that describes the intervehicle communications
network. Assume that all neighboring vehicles communicate in
a continuous manner. Then, the communication protocol given
by (35) and (36) solve the coordinated path-following problem
(3) and (4).
Proof: Consider the augmented Lyapunov function
given by
V
C
= V
T
+ 0.5(
T
+z
T
z) (38)
where = M
T
, with Mas the incident matrix as dened in
Lemma 1. The time derivative of (38) along the solutions of
(30), (31), and (37) gives
V
C

n
i=1
_
_
k
1i

i
u
2
di
2
i
_
x
2
ei
+
_
k
2i

i
u
2
di
2
i
_
y
2
ei
+
_
k
3i

0.5
i
_

2
ei
+ (k
4i
+d
11i
)u
2
ei
+
_
k
6i
+
_
d
33i

m
32i
m
22i
d
23i
__
r
2
ei
_
T
K
1
z
T
K
2
z. (39)
Since V
C
is positive denite and radially unbounded, then,
from (39), it follows that

V
C
0, for any initial condition of
the state X
1
= (x
ei
, y
ei
,

ei
, u
ei
, r
ei
,
T
, z
T
)
T
, if there exists
a constant
1
> 0 such that X
1
(t) <
1
for all t t
0
. There-
fore, X
1
(t) is uniformly continuous in t on [0, ). To conclude
about the asymptotic stability, having
t
_
t
0
V
C
(, X
1
()) d = V
C
(t
0
, X
1
(t
0
)) V
C
(t, X
1
(t))
(40)
it follows that lim
t
_
t
t
0
V
C
(, X
1
())d exists and is nite.
Since X
1
(t) is uniformly continuous, so is

V
C
(t, X
1
(t)). By the
Barbalat lemma [38], we conclude that lim
t

V
C
(t, X
1
(t)) =
0. Therefore, from (39), it follows that x
ei
, y
ei
,

ei
, u
ei
, r
ei
, ,
and z vanish as t . By construction, it is straightforward
to see that vanishes as t , and since = K
1
1

T
L1 +
K
1
1
(L +) z and by the fact that is bounded according
to the argument
i
(t,
i
) in (19), therefore L 0; in other
words, |
i

j
| 0 as t , which completes the proof.
Remark 3: It is worth noticing that, in the steady state, the
coordination controllers (26), (28), and (37) ensure the conver-
gence of (x
ei
, y
ei
,

ei
, u
ei
, r
ei
) to zero. This implies that the
surge velocity u
i
(t) for each underactuated ship will converge
to u
d
0i
that we henceforth consider as being a constant. In what
follows, we assume that is a vector of constant velocities, and
therefore,
T
L1 = 0; we also assume that = 0 to simplify
the presentation of the idea that follows.
C. Coordinated Path Following With
Time-Delayed Information
By the two assumptions stated in Remark 3, the coordination
control (37) is rewritten as
z = (K
1
+K
2
)z +L
= +z K
1
1
L. (41)
Let
ij
denotes the time delay for information communicated
from vehicle j to vehicle i. In a decentralized form, a delayed
version of (41) is given as
z
i
= (k
1
+k
2
)z
i
+
jN
i
l
ij
(
i
(t
ij
)
j
(t
ij
))
i
=
i
+z
i
k
1
1
jN
i
l
ij
(
i
(t
ij
)
j
(t
ij
)) (42)
where l
ij
are elements of the Laplacian matrix. In the case
when the communication link exhibits m distinct time delays,
a coordination result has been established in [31]. In this
section, we consider the coordination-control problem where
the information being transmitted from vehicle j to vehicle i
passes through edge (e
j
, e
i
) with time delay (t). To solve
such a problem, we consider the coordinator protocol given in
(42). Dene a state transformation as
i
=
i
(t)
i
t with
i
being a constant velocity, it easy then to show that (42) can be
rewritten in a matrix form in terms of the new state variable
= [
i
]
n1
as
z = (K
1
+K
2
)z +L (t (t))
=z K
1
1
L (t (t)) . (43)
In the following, we assume that the time-varying delay in (43)
is measurable and satises:
0 (t) h
m
(t) d
m
t 0 (44)
where d
m
0 and h
m
> 0 is the maximum value that the time
delay (t) can take to ensure the coordination problem (4). In
the sequel, we propose to look for an appropriate value for
h
m
such that the coordination problem is guaranteed. In the
following theorem, we will show the main result of this section
whose proof is given in the Appendix.
Theorem 4.2: Assume that (44) holds and the graph G that
describes the topology of the intervehicle communication is
connected. Then, for any 0 d
m
< 1, there exists appropri-
ate h
m
> 0 and positive-denite matrices P, Q R
nn
such
that (43) achieves coordination problem (4) asymptotically.
Fig. 4. Computerlike diagram to nd the maximum delay bound.
Particularly, the allowable h
m
can be obtained from the follow-
ing LMI:
P PK
1
1
L 0
nn

1
h
m
R 0
nn

Q
< 0 (45)
where

P = PK
1
1
L L
T
K
1
1
P +PR
1
P +Q and

Q =
Q+ (h
m
/1 d
m
)LK
1
1
RK
1
1
L
T
+ (1/1 d
m
)LR
1
L
T
.
Moreover, the speed path-following error

i

i
converge
asymptotically to zero as t .
Remark 4: Noting that the maximum allowable time delay
that guarantees coordination control (4) is determined from the
LMI (45), as aforementioned in Theorem 3.1. To be clearer, the
maximum allowable h
m
can be obtained as in [58] from
the following optimization problem.
Maximize h
m
such that
0 d
m
1 P > 0 Q > 0 R > 0
and the condition given in (45) is satised. This optimiza-
tion problem can be solved using any numerical solver of
MATLABs Control System Toolbox.
V. SIMULATIONS
To illustrate the dynamic performance of the proposed co-
ordination control scheme, a simulation study is carried out
in which three underactuated ships assemble and maintain
an in-line formation, i.e., the three underactuated ships are
requested to follow some regular paths with respect to the path
parameter
i
by having them aligned along a common vertical
line. In case the paths are not regular, one can break them
into different regular paths and consider each path separately.
To simplify the path generation, we consider three parallel
paths obtained through interpolating different points in ships
workspace. Simulation results of the closed-loop system with
controller (26)(28), (35), and (36) is shown in Fig. 5. It is
shown that the trajectory tracking is optimally achieved by all
the eet ships. The rst plot in Fig. 6 shows how the vehicles
adjust their speed along the path so as to achieve coordinations.
The third and the fourth subplots show the coordination errors
i

j
and z
i
, which show that the coordination errors decay
to zero as stated by Theorem 4.1. It is also shown in the last
two subplots in Fig. 6 that the position- and orientation-tracking
Fig. 5. Position response of underactuated vessels during simulation
Fig. 6. State variables of different vessels during transient.
errors converge to zero and remain there as Theorem 4.1
suggests. We then study the coordinated path following when
communication channels have the same delay (t) > 0. The
maximum bound on the communication delay is determined by
the following steps shown in Fig. 4 which shows a computerlike
diagram describing a two-step procedure leading to nd a good
estimation of the maximum delay bound.
In Fig. 4, we start by initializing the variable delay to a
specied value
0
; the variable will then be incremented with
a step size h = h
0
if, and only if, matrices P, Q, and R are
Fig. 7. Coordinated path following with constant time delay.
Fig. 8. Coordinated path following with time-varying delay.
found through processing MATLABs LMI solver; otherwise,
the algorithm is stopped, and the maximum delay bound will
be considered as the last incremented .
We perform simulations for coordinated path following for
different values of d
m
; we get the following estimate on h
m
.
1) For d
m
= 0, the maximum bound h
m
that guarantees
coordination is estimated to be 0.369, i.e., h
m
0.369.
Fig. 7 shows this fact.
2) For d
m
= 0.5, the estimated bound is h
m
0.357. When
we increase the time derivative of the delay (for example,
d
m
= 0.9), the allowable bound that ensures coordination
d
m
= 0.257 decreases. Fig. 8 shows this fact.
VI. CONCLUSION
This paper addressed the problem of maneuvering a group
of underactuated ships along given paths. The coordination
scheme is rst executed without time delay. The proposed
solution is basically built on the combination of Lyapunov
technique and graph theory. Simulations illustrated the ef-
ciency of the proposed controller. In a second step, the proposed
solution is extended to consider time-delayed communication
between the marine vehicles. The time delay considered in this
paper was assumed to be known and bounded. Simulations
illustrate the performance obtained for the coordination of
three underactuated ships. Future research on the coordination
path-following control would address implementation issues of
different concepts presented in this paper. An important step
would be to extend the proposed methodology to address more
general problems to a group of vehicles, subject to a wide
range of practical challenges like to study the impact of sensor
noise on system performance and to analyze the effect on the
formation stability when the communication graph that models
the network topology fails temporarily.
APPENDIX
Proof of Theorem 3.1
Stability of (x
ei
, y
ei
,

ei
, u
ei
, r
ei
) dynamics: To investigate
the stability of the (x
ei
, y
ei
,

ei
, u
ei
, r
ei
) dynamics, we con-
sider the Lyapunov function
V
i
= V
1i
+V
2i
+
i
(46)
where V
1i
=0.5(

2
ei
+u
2
ei
+r
2
ei
),
i
= 0.5(
1i

cu
i
+
2i

cv
i
+
3i

cr
i
), and V
2i
=
_
1 +x
2
ei
+y
2
ei
1. Differentiating (46)
along the solutions of (30) and (31) then by completing the
squares gives
V
1i

_
k
1i

i
u
2
di
2
i
_
x
2
ei

_
k
2i

i
u
2
di
2
i
_
y
2
ei
_
k
3i

0.5
i
_

2
ei
(k
4i
+d
11i
)u
2
ei
_
k
6i
+
_
d
33i

m
32i
m
22i
d
23i
__
r
2
ei
+
i
i
(47)
where
i
is a positive constant such that
i
min((k
1i
/
u
2
di
2
i
), (k
2i
/ u
2
di
2
i
)) and k
3i
is such that k
3i
(1/2
i
).
Equations (26) and (28) dene the static part of the control
law [55]; the dynamic part, specifying either

i
or (
i
,
i
),
is to render the term
i
i
in (47) nonpositive. To make the
closed-loop (31) asymptotically stable, one possibility is to
choose
i
= 0 or
i
=
i
tanh(
i
). Alternatively,
i
can be
constructed as (32). By extending the Lyapunov function to
V
i
= V
1i
+V
2i
+
i
+ (1/2
i
i
)
2
i
, its time derivative gives
V
1i

_
k
1i

i
u
2
di
2
i
_
x
2
ei

_
k
2i

i
u
2
di
2
i
_
y
2
ei
_
k
3i

0.5
i
_

2
ei
(k
4i
+d
11i
)u
2
ei
_
k
6i
+
_
d
33i

m
32i
m
22i
d
23i
__
r
2
ei

1
2
i
0.
(48)
The second inequality of (48) implies that the solution
(x
ei
, y
ei
,

ei
, r
ei
, u
ei
,
i
,
cu
i
,
cv
i
,
cr
i
) is bounded. It follows
by application of Barbalats lemma [38] that
lim
t
(x
ei
, y
ei
,

ei
, r
ei
, u
ei
,
i
) = 0. (49)
Boundedness of v
i
: To show that v
i
is bounded, we consider
the following Lyapunov function:
V
v
i
=
1
2
v
2
i
(50)
whose derivative along the fth equation of (10) satises
V
v
i
= a
i
v
2
i
+f
i
()v
i
2a
i
V
v
i
+|f
i
()|
_
2V
v
i
(51)
where f
i
() = b
i
(u
ei
+
ui
)(r
ei
+
ri
) +c
i
(r
ei
+
ri
) +

cv
i
. Performing the change of variables W
v
i
=
_
V
v
i
to obtain the following linear differential
inequality:
W
v
i
a
i
W
v
i
+
2
2
|f
i
()| . (52)
Thus, by the Comparison Lemma [38], W
v
i
satises the
inequality
W
v
i
(t) W
v
i
(t
0
)e
a
i
(tt
0
)
+
2
2
t
_
t
0
e
a
i
(tx)
|f
i
(x)| dx
(53)
and consequently
|v
i
| v
i
(t
0
)e
a
i
(tt
0
)
+
1
a
i
_
1 e
a
i
(tt
0
)
_
sup
tt
0
|f
i
(t)|
max
_
v
i
(t
0
),
1
a
i
sup
tt
0
|f
i
(t)|
_
:= v
M
i
(54)
where sup
tt
0
|f
i
(t)| is nite bounded, since its arguments
are bounded as shown earlier, and therefore, v
i
is bounded.
It now follows from (49), the second equation of (12),
and the boundedness of v
i
(t) that |
ei
| converges to
i
=
| arctan(v
M
i
/u
d
0i
)| < 0.5. Subsequently, the path-following
objective (3) is solved.
Proof of Theorem 4.2
Dene a common LyapunovKrasovskii functional for sys-
tem (43) as follows:
V = 0.5z
T
z +
T
(t)P(t) +
t
_
t
T
(s)Q(s)ds
+
0
_
h
m
t
_
t+

T
(s)R (s)dsd (55)
where P and Q R
nn
are positive-semidenite matrices and
R R
nn
is a positive-denite matrix. By computing the time
derivative of (55) and applying the Parks inequality [48], we
obtain
V (t)
T
_
PK
1
1
L L
T
K
1
1
P +h
m
PK
1
1
LR
1
LK
1
1
P +Q+PR
1
P
_
(t)
T
+(t )
T
_
h
m
L
T
K
1
1
RK
1
1
L +LRL
T
(1 d
m
)Q) (t )
z
T
_
K
1
+K
2

_
1
2
R
1
+h
m
R
__
z.
If we choose K
1
+K
2
> h
m
R + (1/2)R, then a sufcient
condition for

V to be negative is to verify that
(t)
T
_
PK
1
1
L L
T
K
1
1
P +h
m
PK
1
1
LR
1
LK
1
1
P
+Q+PR
1
P
_
(t)
T
< 0
(t )
T
_
h
m
L
T
K
1
1
RK
1
1
L +LRL
T
(1 d
m
)Q) (t ) < 0. (56)
Then, by Schur Complement formula [15], the matrix inequal-
ities (56) are equivalent to (45). Let the state vector y
T
=
[
T
, z
T
]
T
, then there exists a positive constant > 0 such that
V (t) y
2
. (57)
This implies that the zero solution of (43) is asymptotically
stable by , Th. 2.1[34]. Consequently, for any 1 > d
m
> 0,
system (43) achieves coordination control (4) asymptotically
for all 0 h
m
, where h
m
is determined by (45). Moreover,
since zero is a solution of (43), then, according to Barbalats
Lemma [38],
i
(t) 0 as t , this means that

i

i
as
t , which completes the proof.
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Apr. 1991.
Jawhar Ghommam (M09) was born in Tunis,
Tunisia, in 1979. He received the B.Sc. degree from
the Institut Nationale des Sciences Appliques et de
Technologies (INSAT), Tunis, in 2003, the M.Sc.
degree in control engineering from the Laboratoire
dInformatique, de Robotique et de Micro-
electronique, Montpellier, France, in 2004, and the
Ph.D. degree in control engineering and industrial
computer jointly from the Universit of Orlans,
Orlans, France, and the Ecole Nationale
dIngnieurs de Sfax, Sfax, Tunisia, in 2008.
He is currently an Assistant Professor of control engineering with INSAT.
He is currently also a member of the Research Unit on Mechatronics and
Autonomous Systems, Ecole Nationale dIngnieurs de Sfax. His research in-
terests include nonlinear control of underactuated mechanical systems, adaptive
control, guidance and control of underactuated ships, and cooperative motion
of nonholonomic vehicles.
Faal Mnif (A05M05SM06) received the
M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in control and robotics from
the Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal, Montreal, QC,
Canada, in 1991 and 1997, respectively.
He was an Associate Professor of control engi-
neering and robotics with the National Institute of
Applied Sciences and Technology, Tunis, Tunisia. In
2002, he joined Sultan Qaboos University, Muscat,
Oman, where he is currently an Associate Professor
with the Department of Electrical and Computer
Engineering. He is currently also a Member of the
Research Unit on Mechatronics and Autonomous Systems, Ecole Nationale
dIngnieurs de Sfax, Sfax, Tunisia. His main research interests include robot
modeling and control, control of autonomous vehicles, modeling and control
of holonomic and nonholonomic mechanical systems, and robust and nonlinear
control.

Coordinated path
following of mobile
robots
Robotics and Autonomous Systems 58 (2010) 727736

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Robotics and Autonomous Systems
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/robot
Formation path following control of unicycle-type mobile robots
Jawhar Ghommam
a
, Hasan Mehrjerdi
b
, Maarouf Saad
b
, Faial Mnif
a,c,
a
Research unit on Mechatronics and Autonomous Systems, cole Nationale dIngnieurs de Sfax (ENIS), BP W, 3038 Sfax, Tunisia
b
Department of Electrical Engineering, cole de technologie suprieure, 1100, rue Notre-Dame Ouest, Montral, Qubec, H3C 1K3, Canada
c
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Sultan Qaboos University, P.O. Box 33, Muscat 123, Oman
a r t i c l e i n f o
Article history:
Received 30 November 2008
Received in revised form
27 October 2009
Accepted 29 October 2009
Available online 12 November 2009
Keywords:
Path following
Formation control
Virtual structure
Nonholonomic robot
Adaptive control
a b s t r a c t
This paper presents a control strategy for the coordination of multiple mobile robots. Acombination of the
virtual structure and path following approaches is used to derive the formation architecture. A formation
controller is proposed for the kinematic model of two-degree-of-freedom unicycle-type mobile robots.
The approach is then extended to consider the formation controller by taking into account the physical
dimensions and dynamics of the robots. The controller is designed in such a way that the path derivative is
left as a free input to synchronize the robots motion. Simulation results with three robots are included to
show the performance of our control system. Finally, the theoretical results are experimentally validated
on a multi-robot platform.
2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
During recent years, efforts have been made to give autonomy
to single mobile robots by using different sensors, actuators and
advanced control algorithms. This was mainly motivated by the
necessity to develop complex tasks in an autonomous way, as de-
manded by service or production applications. In some applica-
tions, a valid alternative (or even the mandatory solution) is the
use of multiple simple robots which, operating in a coordinated
way, can develop complex tasks [13]. This alternative offers addi-
tional advantages, in terms of flexibility in operating the group of
robots and failure tolerance due to redundancy in available mobile
robots [4]. In the literature, there have been three main methods to
formation control of multiple robots: leader following, behavioral
and virtual structure. Each approach has its own advantages and
disadvantages.
In the leader following approach, some vehicles are considered
as leaders, whilst the rest of robots in the group act as followers
[1,5]. The leaders track predefined reference trajectories, and the
followers track transformed versions of the states of their nearest
neighbors according to given schemes. An advantage of the leader
Corresponding author at: Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering,

Sultan Qaboos University, P.O. Box 33, Muscat 123, Oman.
E-mail addresses: jghommam@gmail.com (J. Ghommam),
hasan.mehrjerdi.1@ens.etsmtl.ca (H. Mehrjerdi), Maarouf.Saad@etsmtl.ca
(M. Saad), mnif@squ.edu.om (F. Mnif).
following approach is that it is easy to understand and implement.
In addition, the formation can still be maintained even if the leader
is perturbed by some disturbances. However, the disadvantage re-
lated to this approach is that there is no explicit feedback to the
formation; that is, there is no explicit feedback from the followers
to the leader in this case.
The behavioral approach prescribes a set of desired behaviors
for eachmember inthe group, and weighs themsuchthat desirable
group behavior emerges without an explicit model of the subsys-
tems or the environment. Possible behaviors include trajectory and
neighbor tracking, collision and obstacle avoidance, and formation
keeping. In [6], the behavioral approach for multi-robot teams is
described where formation behaviors are implemented with other
navigational behaviors to derive control strategies for goal seek-
ing, collision avoidance and formation maintenance. The advan-
tage is that it is natural to derive control strategies when vehicles
have multiple competing objectives, and an explicit feedback is in-
cluded through communication between neighbors. The disadvan-
tages are that the group behavior cannot be explicitly defined, and
it is difficult to analyze the approach mathematically and guaran-
tee the group stability.
In the virtual structure approach, the entire formation is treated
as a single, virtual, structure and it acts as a single rigid body. The
control law for a single vehicle is derived by defining the dynam-
ics of the virtual structure and it then translates the motion of the
virtual structure into the desired motion for each vehicle [79].
In [10], virtual structures have been achieved by having all mem-
bers of the formation tracking assigned nodes which move into de-
sired configuration. Aformation feedback has been used to prevent
0921-8890/$ see front matter 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.robot.2009.10.007
728 J. Ghommam et al. / Robotics and Autonomous Systems 58 (2010) 727736
members leaving the group. Each member of the formation tracks
a virtual element, while the motion of the elements is governed
by a formation function that specifies the desired geometry of the
formation. The main advantages of the virtual structure approach
is that it is fairly easy to prescribe the coordinated behavior for the
group, and the formation can be maintained very well during the
maneuvers; that is, the virtual structure can evolve as a whole in
a given direction with some given orientation and maintain a rigid
geometric relationship among multiple vehicles. However, if the
formation has to maintain the exact same virtual structure all the
time, the potential applications are limited, especially when the
formation shape is time varying or needs to be frequently recon-
figured.
In addition to the references mentioned so far, there have been
many results on the mathematical analysis of formation control.
In [11], the authors analyze the stability of the behavior of the
first-order vehicles in a formation that relied on the Graph Lapla-
cian associated with a given communication topology. Consen-
sus algorithms applied to a team represented by a second-order
dynamics are presented in [12] to guarantee attitude alignment
and velocities in a group of vehicles using undirected commu-
nication information. New results on formation control based on
second-order consensus protocols was given in [13]. In [14], new
general potential functions are constructed to design formation
controllers that yield semi-global asymptotic convergence of a
group of mobile agents to a desired formation, and guarantee no
collisions among the agents. However, most of those works model
the agents as point robots and consider only the problem of posi-
tion control of the robots. In numerous applications the orientation
of the agents plays an important role, which means that the agents
must be modeled as rigid bodies. Taking into account the position
and orientation of the rigid bodies in a formation of a team of mo-
bile robots, Breivik et al. [15] proposed a guided formation control
scheme based on a modular design procedure that makes the de-
sign completely decentralized in the sense that no variables need
to be communicated between the formation members. In [16], the
problemof coordinated path following of multiple wheeled robots
was solved by resorting to linearization and gain scheduling tech-
niques. Even though the solution given to the problem is sim-
ple, it lacks global results; that is, convergence of the vehicles to
their paths and to the desired formation pattern is only guaranteed
locally.
The challenge we are tackling in this paper is to design a non-
linear formation control law based on a virtual structure approach
for the coordination of a group of N mobile robots [17]. This control
law should force the robots relative positions with respect to the
center of the virtual structure during the motion. The control sys-
temis derived in four stages. First, the dynamic of the virtual struc-
ture is defined. Second, the desired motion for each mobile robot
is defined by translating by a given distance the motion of the vir-
tual structure center. Third, the path following problem for each
mobile robot is solved individually, by introducing a virtual target
that propagates along the path. We interpret the path following
errors in a triangular form, for which the backstepping technique
canbe appliedto control the rate of progressionof the virtual target
along the path, and a local control lawthat makes the mobile robot
track the virtual target. Finally, coordination is achieved by syn-
chronizing the parametrization states that capture the positions of
the virtual targets with the parametrization states of the virtual
structures center. The formationof a simplifiedkinematic model of
robots is first considered to clarify the design philosophy. The pro-
posed technique is then extended to the dynamics of mobile robots
with nonholonomic constraints. The experimental controller test-
ing was performed on EtsRo vehicles, available at the GREPCI,
Robotics Lab of the cole de Technologie Suprieure of Montreal.
The reminder of this paper is organized as follows. The prob-
lem statement is presented in Section 2. Section 3 is devoted to
Fig. 1. Formation structure.
modeling of the path following configuration for a wheeled mobile
robot, while Sections 4 and 5 are the main part of this paper fo-
cussing on the study of the coordinated control for, respectively,
a team of kinematic wheeled mobile robots and dynamic mobile
robots. Simulation and experimental results are presented in Sec-
tion 6. A conclusion is given in Section 7.
2. Problem statement
2.1. Kinematic model
We consider a group of N mobile robots, each of which has the
following equations of motion:
x
i
= v
i
cos(
i
)
y
i
= v
i
sin(
i
)
i
=
i
(1)
where
i
= [x
i
, y
i
,
i
]
denotes the position and the orientation

vector of the ith robot of the group with respect to an inertial co-
ordination frame (Fig. 1). v
i
and
i
stand for the linear and angular
velocities, respectively. For the group to move in a prescribed for-
mation, eachmember will require anindividual parameterized ref-
erence path so that when all path parameters are synchronized the
member i will be information. We cangeneralize the setup of a sin-
gle path (s) to n paths by defining the center of a virtual structure
that moves along a given reference path (s
0
) = [x
d0
(s
0
), y
d0
(s
0
)],
with s
0
being a path parameter, and create a set of n designa-
tion vectors l
i
(x
d0
(s
i
), y
d0
(s
i
)) relative to the center of the struc-
ture. When the center of the virtual structure moves along the path
0
(s
0
), mobile robot i will then follow the individual desired path
given by
i
(s
i
) =
0
(s
0
) +R(
d0
(s
i
))l
i
(x
d0
(s
i
), y
d0
(s
i
)) (2)
where R(
d0
(s
i
)) is the rotation matrix from a frame attached to
the center of the virtual structure and the earth fixed frame, which
is given as
R(
d0
(s
i
)) =
_
cos(
0
(s
i
)) sin(
0
(s
i
))
sin(
0
(s
i
)) cos(
0
(s
i
))
_
d0
(s
i
) = arctan
_
y
s
i
d0
x
s
i
d0
_
(3)
where the partial derivative notations in [17,18] are used; i.e.,
y
s
i
d0
=
y
d0
(s
i
)
s
i
, and x
s
i
d0
=
x
d0
(s
i
)
s
i
.
J. Ghommam et al. / Robotics and Autonomous Systems 58 (2010) 727736 729
2.2. Control objective
Before going on with the design, we first give the following as-
sumption.
Assumption 1. 1. We assume that each mobile robot i of the for-
mation broadcasts its state and reference trajectory to the rest
of the robots in the group. Moreover, it can receive states and
reference trajectories from the other robots of the group.
2. The desired geometric path is regularly parameterized; i.e.,
there exist strictly positive constants
1i
and
2i
, 1 i N
such that
(x
s
i
di
)
2
(s) +(y
s
i
di
)
2
(s)
1i
, s
0

2i
. (4)
Remark 1. The second inequality of Eq. (4) means that the center
of the virtual structure moves forward.
The overall control objective is to solve the formation problem
for N mobile robots which consists of two parts [17]. The geometric
task ensures that an individual mobile robot converges to and
stays at its designation in the formation. The dynamic task ensures
that the formation maintains a speed along the path according to
the given speed assignment. The formation control objective boils
down to design controller v
i
and
i
such that
lim
t
i
(t)
di
(t) = 0
lim
t
|s
i
(t) s
0
(t)| = 0 (5)
where
id
denotes the ith reference path to be tracked by robot i.
The following lemma [19] will be useful later.
Lemma 1. Consider a scalar system
x = kx +f (t)
where k > 0 and f (t) is a bounded and uniformly continuous
function. If, for any initial t
0
0 and any initial condition x(t
0
), the
solution x(t) is bounded and converges to 0 as t , then
lim
t
f (t) = 0.
Proof. The result follows using the BellmanGrown inequality
lemma and the triangular inequality.
3. Path following error dynamic
The problem we consider here is the path following for each
mobile robot in the formation; that is, we wish to find the control
law v
i
and
i
such that the robot follows a reference point in the
path with position
di
= [x
di
, y
di
,
di
]
and inputs v
di
and
di
. The
path error is therefore interpreted in a frame attached to the refer-
ence path (s
i
). Following [20], we define the error coordinates
_
x
ei
y
ei
ei
_
=
_
cos(
i
) sin(
i
) 0
sin(
i
) cos(
i
) 0
0 0 1
__
x
i
x
di
y
i
y
di
i

di
_
(6)
where
di
is defined as
di
= arctan
_
y
s
i
di
x
s
i
di
_
. (7)
The error dynamics are then
x
ei
= v
i
v
di
cos(
ei
) +y
ei
i
y
ei
= v
di
sin(
ei
) x
ei
i
(8)
ei
=
i

di
where we have defined
v
di
=
_
x
s
i
di
(s
i
)
2
+y
s
i
di
(s
i
)
2
s
i
:= v
di
(s
i
) s
i
(9)
di
=
x
s
i
di
(s
i
)y
s
2
i
di
(s
i
) x
s
2
i
di
(s
i
)y
s
i
di
(s
i
)
x
s
i
di
(s
i
)
2
+y
s
i
di
(s
i
)
2
s
i
:=
di
(s
i
) s
i
. (10)
4. Control design
In the tracking model (8), y
ei
could not be directly controlled,
and to overcome this difficulty, we employ the backstepping ap-
proach [19].
Define the following variable:
s
i
= s
i
+
i
(t, x
e
, y
e
,
e
) (11)
where x
e
= [x
e1
, x
e2
, . . . , x
en
]
, y
e
= [y
e1
, y
e2
, . . . , y
en
]
and
e
= [
e1
,
e2
, . . . ,
en
]
;
i
(t, x
e
, y
e
,
e
) is a strictly positive
function that specifies how fast the ith mobile robot should move
to maintain the formation since s
i
is related to the desired forward
speed v
di
.
Step 1. Design a controller to stabilize the x
ei
dynamic. The variable
s
i
should be left as an extra controller in order to synchronize all
the path parameters of each mobile robot in the formation. We
therefore choose the following control for x
ei
:
v
i
= k
1i
x
ei
+ v
di
cos(
ei
). (12)
In a closed loop, the x
ei
dynamic can be rewritten as
x
ei
= k
1i
x
ei
v
di
s
i
cos(
ei
) +y
ei
i
. (13)
From (13), it is seen that, if

s
i
and y
ei
are zero, then x
ei
globally
exponentially converges to zero.
The next step of the design will focus on designing a controller
to stabilize
ei
at the origin.
Step 2. Design a controller for
i
. Consider the following Lyapunov
function:
V =
1
2
n
i=1
(x
2
ei
+y
2
ei
+
2
ei
+
i
(s
i
s
0
)
2
) (14)
where
i
is a positive constant. The time derivative of (14) along
the solutions of (13) and (8) yields
V =
n
i=1
x
ei
(k
1i
x
ei
v
di
s
i
cos(
ei
) +y
ei
i
)
+
n
i=1
y
ei
( v
di
(
s
i
+
i
) sin(
ei
) x
ei
i
)
+
n
i=1
ei
(
i

di
(
s +
i
))
+
n
i=1
i
(s
i
s
0
)(
s
i
+
i
s
0
). (15)
If we select
i
= s
0
, (16)
the derivative of the Lyapunov function V becomes
V =
n
i=1
k
1i
x
2
ei
+
ei
_
y
ei
v
di
i
_
1
0
cos(
ei
)d
+
i

di
i
_
+
n
i=1
_
v
di
cos(
ei
)x
ei
+y
ei
v
di
sin(
ei
)
ei

di
+
i
(s
i
s
0
)
_
s
i
. (17)
To make the derivative of the Lyapunov function V negative, we
choose the following controllers:
i
= k
2i
ei
y
ei
v
di
i
_
1
0
cos(
ei
)d +
di
s
i
=
tanh
_
v
di
cos(
ei
)x
ei
+y
ei
v
di
sin(
ei
)
ei

di
+
i
(s
i
s
0
)
_
(18)
where
is a positive constant to be selected later. Substituting the

equations of (18) into (17) yields
V =
n
i=1
k
1i
x
2
ei
k
2i
2
ei

i
tanh(
i
) (19)
where
i
= v
di
cos(
ei
)x
ei
+ y
ei
v
di
sin(
ei
)
ei

di
+
i
(s
i
s
0
).
We are able now to choose an appropriate function for s
0
such
that, when the tracking errors are large, the center of the virtual
structure will wait for the rest of the group; however, when the
errors converge to zero, we impose s
0
to approach a given positive
bounded function
0
(t), which means that the center of the virtual
structure will move at a desired speed. s
0
can be chosen as, among
many others, [21]
s
0
=
0
(t)(1
1
e
2
(tt
0
)
)(1
3
tanh(x
e

x
x
e
+y
e

y
y
e
+
e
)) (20)
where
0
(t) is a strictly positive and bounded function. This func-
tion specifies how fast the whole group of robots should move.
x
,
y
and
are weighting positive matrices. All the constants
1
,
2
and
3
are nonnegative, and
1
and
3
should be less than
1. Now, if we choose the constant
such that
<
0
(t)(1
1
)(1
3
) (21)
then we have
s
i
=
tanh(
i
) +
0
(t)(1
1
e
2
(tt
0
)
)
(1
3
tanh(x
e

x
x
e
+y
e

y
y
e
+
e
))

+
0
(t)(1
1
)(1
3
) > 0. (22)
From the above control design, we have the closed loop system
x
ei
= k
1i
x
ei
v
di
s
i
cos(
ei
) +y
ei
i
y
ei
= v
di
sin(
ei
) +k
2i
ei
x
ei
+y
ei
x
ei
v
di
i
_
1
0
cos(
ei
)d x
ei

di
i
(23)
ei
= k
2i
ei
y
ei
v
di
i
_
1
0
cos(
ei
)d
di
s
i
s
i
=
tanh(
i
) +
0
(t)(1
1
e
2
(tt
0
)
)
(1
3
tanh(x
e

x
x
e
+y
e

y
y
e
+
e
)).
We nowstate the main result of the formation control for the kine-
matic model of unicycle-type mobile robots.
Theorem 2. Under Assumption 1, the control inputs v
i
and
i
given
in (12) and (18) and the time derivative of each individual path s
i
given in (22) for the mobile robot i solve the formation control ob-
jective. In particular, the closed loop system is forward complete, and
the position and orientation of the robots track their path reference
asymptotically in the sense of (5).
Proof (Forward Completness). From (19), we have that

V 0,
which implies that
V(t) V(t
0
), t t
0
. (24)
From the definition of V, the right-hand side of (24) is bounded
by a positive constant depending on the initial conditions. The
boundedness of the left-hand side of (24) also implies those of
x
ei
, y
ei
,
ei
and s
i
s
0
for all t t
0
0. The assumed boundedness
of
0
(t) implies that of the right-hand side of the last equation
of (23) depends continuously on t through bounded functions.
It follows that s
i
and therefore s
0
are bounded on the maximal
interval of definition[0, T); this excludes finite escape time, so T =
+. This in turn implies by construction that x
i
(t), y
i
(t),
i
(t), s
i
and s
0
do not go to infinity in finite time.
(Stability of (x
ei
, y
ei
,
ei
)) From the above argument on the bound-
edness of (x
ei
, y
ei
,
ei
, s
i
s
0
), applying Barbalts lemma [22] to (19)
results in
lim
t
(x
ei
,
ei
) = 0
lim
t
i
tanh(
i
) = 0. (25)
On the other hand, from the second equation of (25), we conclude
that
lim
t
i
= 0
lim
t
s
i
= 0. (26)
From this fact, we also conclude that
lim
t
(s
i
s
0
) = 0, (27)
which satisfies the second objective of (5). To satisfy the first ob-
jective of (5), we have to show that y
ei
also converges to zero as t
goes to infinity. In a closed loop the
ei
dynamic can be rewritten
as follows:
ei
= k
2i
ei
y
ei
v
di
i
_
1
0
cos(
ei
)d
di
s
i
. (28)
Let f (t) = y
ei
v
di
i
_
1
0
cos(
ei
)d
di
s
i
; according to Lemma 1,
it follows that
lim
t
y
ei
v
di
i
_
1
0
cos(
ei
)d = 0
since lim
t
_
1
0
cos(
ei
)d = 1, then lim
t
y
ei
= 0, which
concludes the first objective of (5).
5. Extension of formation control to the dynamic model of the
mobile robot
In this section, we study the augmented system (8) appended
with a dynamic model of a nonholonomic mobile robot [23].
x
ei
= v
i
v
di
cos(
ei
) +y
ei
i
y
ei
= v
di
sin(
ei
) x
ei
i
(29)
ei
=
i

di
M
i

i
= C
i
(
i
)
i
D
i
i
+B
i
i
where
i
= [v
i
,
i
]
,
i
= [
1i
,
2i
]
are the control vector torques

applied to the wheels of the robot i. The modified mass matrix,
Coriolis and Damping matrices are given by
M
i
= B
1
i
M
i
B
i
, C
i
(
i
) = B
1
i
C
i
(
i
)B
i
D
i
= B
1
i
D
i
B
i
where B
i
is an invertible matrix given by B
i
=
_
1 b
i
1 b
i
_
and
M =
_
m
11i
m
12i
m
12i
m
11i
_
, C
i
(
i
) =
_
0 c
i
i
c
i
i
0
_
, D
i
=
_
d
11i
0
0 d
22i
_
with
b
i
, m
11i
, m
22i
, d
11i
, d
22i
and c
i
are the dynamic parameters of each
Fig. 2. Interaction between the host computer and the robots.
group, which are not necessarily know. Definitions of these param-
eters are given in [23]. In this section we intend to show that the
formation control developed for the kinematic model can also be
obtained for the complete dynamic of unicycle-type mobile robots.
The control objective is thereby similar to that of (5) and consists
of finding the controller
i
that satisfies all the conditions of (5).
We introduce the following new variables:
ei
=
i

i
, v
ei
= v
i

v
i
,
ei
=
i

i
(30)
where
v
i
and
i
are defined as in (12) and (18), respectively. Fol-
lowing the notation in Section 4, in the new coordinates (x
ei
, y
ei
,
ei
, v
ei
,
ei
) the system (29) is transformed into
x
ei
= k
1i
x
ei
v
di
s
i
cos(
ei
) +y
ei
i
+v
ei
y
ei
= v
di
sin(
ei
) +k
2i
ei
x
ei
+y
ei
x
ei
v
di
i
_
1
0
cos(
ei
)d x
ei

di
i
x
ei
ei
ei
= k
2i
ei
y
ei
v
di
i
_
1
0
cos(
ei
)d
di
s
i
+
ei
(31)
M
ei
= C
i
(
i
)
i
D
i
i
M
i
[
v
i
,
i
]
+B
i
i
= D
i
ei
+
i
i
+B
i
i
where
i
=
_
2
i

v
i

v
i
0 0 0
0 0 0
i
v
i

i
_
i
=
_
b
i
c
i
d
11i
m
11i
+m
12i
c
i
b
i
d
22i
m
11i
m
12i
_
. (32)
At this stage, we design the actual control input vector
i
and up-
dated laws for the unknown system parameter vector
i
for each
robot i. To do so, we consider the following Lyapunov function:
V
2
= V +
1
2
N
i
_
ei
M
i
ei
+

i

1
i

i
_
(33)
where

i
=
i
i
, with

i
being an estimate of
i
and
i
a sym-
metric positive definite matrix. Differentiating both sides of (33)
along the solutions of (31) and (17) yields a non-negative func-
tion. This suggests that we choose for the control input
i
, the path
parameter s
i
and the updated law

i
the following
i
= B
1
_
K
1i
ei

i
i

_
x
ei

ei
_
i
=
i
proj(
i

ei
,
i
)
s
i
=
tanh(
i
) +
0
(t)(1
1
e
2
(tt
0
)
)
(1
3
tanh(x
e

x
x
e
+y
e

y
y
e
+
e
)) (34)
Fig. 3. The three EtsRo mobile robots in the experiments.
where the operator, proj, is the Lipschitz continuous projec-
tion [24] algorithm applied in our case as follows:
proj(, ) = , if, ( ) 0
proj(, ) = , if, ( ) 0 and

( ) 0
proj(, ) = (1 ( )), if, ( ) > 0 and

( ) > 0
where ( ) = (
2

2
M
)/(k
2
+ 2k
M
),

( ) =
_

( )

_
, k
is an arbitrarily small positive constant, is an estimate of and
||
M

= proj(, )
and (t
0
)
M
then
(a) (t)
M
+k, 0 t
0
t
(b) proj(, ) is Lipschitz continuous
(c) |proj(, )| ||
(d) proj(, ) with =
and K
1i
is a symmetric positive definite matrix. Using Property (d)
of the projection algorithm results in
V
2

n
i=1
_
k
1i
x
2
ei
+k
2i
2
ei
+
i
tanh(
i
)
+
ei
(D
i
+K
1i
)
ei
_
. (35)
From the above control design, we have the closed loop system
x
ei
= k
1i
x
ei
v
di
s
i
cos(
ei
) +y
ei
i
+v
ei
y
ei
= v
di
sin(
ei
) +k
2i
ei
x
ei
+y
ei
x
ei
v
di
i
_
1
0
cos(
ei
)d x
ei

di
i
x
ei
ei
ei
= k
2i
ei
y
ei
v
di
i
_
1
0
cos(
ei
)d
di
s
i
+
ei
M
ei
= (D
i
+K
1i
)
ei
+
i
i

_
x
ei

ei
_
s
i
=
tanh(
i
) +
0
(t)(1
1
e
2
(tt
0
)
)
(1
3
tanh(x
e

x
x
e
+y
e

y
y
e
+
e
))
i
=
i
proj(
i

ei
,
i
). (36)
Theorem 3. Under Assumption 1, the control inputs
i
and the
update law

i
given in (34) for the mobile robot i solve the formation
control objective. In particular, the closed loop system (36) is forward
complete and all signals in the closed loop system are Uniformly
Ultimately Bounded (UUB).
(a) Desired and actual vehicle trajectories. (b) Path following errors x
ei
.
(c) Path following errors y
ei
. (d) Heading errors
ei
.
(e) Path parameter error in the form
_
3
i=1
(s
i
s
0
)
2
. (f) Time evolution of the forward velocity of each robot.
Fig. 4. Coordination of three wheeled robots along a sinusoidal path.
Proof. Let X
ei
= [x
ei
, y
ei
,
ei
]
and Z
i
= [X
ei
,
ei
,
i
, s
i
]
.
Considering (35), by subtracting and adding
1
2
N
i=1

i

1
i

i
to
its right-hand side, we get
V
2
V
2
+ (37)
where = min(1, 2
1
, . . . ,
N
),
i
= min(k
1i
, k
2i
,
) and =
1
2
N
i=1

i

1
i

i
. From (37), it is straightforward to show that
V
2
(t) V
2
(t
0
)e
(tt
0
)
+

. (38)
This implies that, for all t in the maximal interval of definition
[0, T),
Z
i
p
i
Z
i
(t
0
)e
0.5(tt
0
)
+
i
(39)
where p
i
is a constant that depends on the elements of
i
, and
i
=
_
. Consequently, all the signals in the closed-loop are

guaranteed to be UUB.
The assumed boundedness of
0
(t) implies that the right-hand
side of (36) depends continuously on time t through a bounded
function. With Z
i
being bounded, it follows that (36) is bounded
on the maximal interval of definition. This excludes finite escape
times.
6. Simulation and experimental tests
In this section, we provide simulation and experimental results
to validate the theoretical results of Sections 4 and 5. For the sim-
ulations and experiments, the number of robots in the formation
group is chosen for simplicity of implementation to be N = 3, and
(a) Desired and actual vehicle trajectories. (b) Time varying distance between the center of the virtual structure and the
robots.
Fig. 5. Maneuvering coordination of three wheeled robots along different paths.
the interactions between the host computer and the robots are as-
sumed to be bidirectional, as in Fig. 2. The experimental platform,
implementation of the algorithm, and experimental results will be
described in detail.
6.1. Numerical simulations
To illustrate the dynamic performance of the proposed coordi-
nation control scheme in Section 4, numerical simulations were
carried out. The three mobile robots assemble and maintain an
in-line formation; that is, the three robots are requested to fol-
low some regular paths with respect to the path parameter s
i
by
having them aligned along a common vertical line. In the case
when the paths are not regular, one can break them into differ-
ent regular paths and consider each path separately. Hereafter, we
propose two different scenarios for coordination. In the first one,
we simulate the coordination control to execute an in-line forma-
tion along three sinusoidal paths by having them aligned along a
common vertical line. Next, a different kind of formation maneu-
ver of three mobile robots is presented, in which one robot is re-
quired to follow the x-axis, while the two others must follow a
sinusoidal path, while the three agents keep an in-line formation
along the y-axis. For both scenarios, the control gains, the initial
conditions, and the parameters involved the update of the path pa-
rameters are k
1
= 150, k
2
= 70,
= 0.12,
0
= 5,
1
=
0.5,
2
= 2,
3
= 0.5, s
i
(0) = 2, [x
1
(t
0
), y
1
(t
0
),
1
(t
0
)]
=
[4, 2,

4
]
, [x
2
(t
0
), y
2
(t
0
),
2
(t
0
)]
= [3.5, 1,

4
]
, [x
3
(t
0
),
y
3
(t
0
),
3
(t
0
)]
= [3.5, 0.5,

4
]
, and
x
=
y
=
=
diag(1, 1, 1). In the first scenario, the reference path for the cen-
ter of the virtual structure is taken as x
d0
= 0.1s
0
3.5 and
y
d0
= 0.5 cos(0.1s
0
). The distances from the vehicles to the cen-
ter of the virtual structure are chosen as l
1
(x
d0
(s
1
), y
d0
(s
1
)) =
(0, 0), l
2
(x
d0
(s
2
), y
d0
(s
2
)) = (0.1s
2
3.5, 0.5 cos(0.1s
2
) 1) and
l
3
(x
d0
(s
3
), y
d0
(s
3
)) = (0.1s
1
3.5, 0.5 cos(0.1s
1
) + 1). Clearly
the choice for the distance l
1
means that the first robot coincides
with the center of the virtual structure. In Fig. 4(a), the vehicles
are progressing successfully towards their paths and the vehicles
ultimately attain their desired formation configuration. The path
tracking and path parameter errors are plotted in Fig. 4(b), (c),
(d) and (e), respectively. Notice in Fig. 4(f) how the vehicles ad-
just their speed along the path so as to achieve coordinations.
This could be explained as follows. During the first few seconds,
the vehicles quickly move to reach their trajectories; once they
keep moving on their paths, each vehicle slows down to wait
for its neighbors in order to synchronize as long as they propa-
gate. Fig. 5(a) depicts a typical formation maneuver involving three
robots along different paths. This example captures the situation
where a vehicle (moving in straight line) directs two other robots
Fig. 6. Path references and real robot trajectories.
to inspect two distinct symmetric areas along a fixeddirection. This
particular formation shows the novelty of the method adopted us-
ing the virtual structure approach, since we allow the distances
between robots to change (see Fig. 5(b)).
6.2. Experimental validation
In this section, we provide experimental results to validate the
theoretical results of Section 5 on a team of three mobile robots.
6.2.1. Robot platform and program implementation
To show the performance of the proposed controllers, several
experiments were executed. The proposed controllers were im-
plemented on a team of EtsRo mobile robot platforms. The EtsRo
vehicle is available at the Robotics Lab of the cole de Technolo-
gie Suprieure in Montreal, supplied with an automatic naviga-
tion system. A picture of a team of three EtsRo robots is given
in Fig. 3. EtsRo is a four-wheel car-like mobile robot, equipped
with two driving front wheels and DC motors. The EtsRo sensor
equipment consists of high precision wheel encoders giving the
relative localization of the vehicle, mounted on the motors count-
ing (6000 pulses/turn). Within each robot there is a 32-bit micro-
controller ATmega32 that maintains support for all sensor and
actuation features of the robot and manages the navigation, guid-
ance and control of the vehicle. A control programis sent remotely
by a Zigbee USB-Modem to the EtsRos. The range of the modem
is about 100 m, which makes it a high quality modem for indoor
applications. The host computer executes programs which trans-
mit the desired posture and the control commands to the EtsRos
Fig. 7. Path following errors x
ei
.
Fig. 8. Path following errors y
ei
.
Fig. 9. Heading errors
ei
.
through an on-board micro-controller. The communication delay
between the host computer and each robot is evaluated as 100 ms.
Two level controller architectures are designed to navigate and
steer the EtsRo robots. The lower one is a PID controller, respon-
sible for adjusting the velocity of right and left wheels. To filter
sparks and unwanted noises on the velocities, a second-order filter
was designed and implemented. The higher level one is a nonlin-
ear controller, and it is designed to navigate and steer the mobile
robots with regard to the desired coordination.
6.2.2. Experimental results
The simulations presented in Section 5 do not take into account
the dynamics of the robots. EtsRo robots are actuated with DC mo-
tors that are characterized by a relatively poor transient responses.
Moreover, the left and right motors may not have the same re-
sponse due to the nonhomogeneous mass distribution over the
robot body. For this reasons, the coordinated controller in Section 5
Fig. 10. Evolution of the forward velocities in the first scenario.
Fig. 11. Evolution of the angular velocities in the first scenario.
Fig. 12. Path references and real robot trajectories.
was implemented on the testbed program. The robots configu-
ration was used as before, but the controller gains were set with
smaller values since the physical robots are very sensitive to gains
in actuation. Therefore the control gains k
1i
= 0.04, k
2i
= 2 and
K
i
= diag(25, 35) were implemented to prevent the control inputs
from saturating the motors. The environment in which the robots
can evolve is a rectangular arena, 4 m 7 m. Assuming that the
three robots are identical, the nominal robot parameters (which
were obtained via identification) are given in Table 1. The expres-
sions for each element of the mass matrix are given as
m
11i
= 0.25b
2
i
r
2
i
(m
i
b
2
i
+I
i
) +I
wi
,
m
12i
= 0.25b
2
i
r
2
i
(m
i
b
2
i
I
i
)
m
i
= m
c
i
+2m
wi
, I
i
= m
c
i
a
2
i
+2m
wi
b
2
i
+I
ci
+2I
mi
.
Fig. 13. Evolution of the forward velocities in the second scenario.
Table 1
Parameters of the EtsRo mobile robot.
Parameters Values Unit
r
i
0.04 (m)
b
i
0.1 (m)
a
i
0.02 (m)
m
c
i
2.3 (kg)
m
wi
0.28 (kg)
I
c
i
0.01 (kg m
2
)
I
wi
0.0056 (kg m
2
)
I
mi
0.002 (kg m
2
)
In the experiment, the trajectories to follow by the robots are
as described in simulations section. The initial positions and ori-
entations for the robots remained at [x
1
(t
0
), y
1
(t
0
),
1
(t
0
)]
=
[4.5 m, 1.5 m, 0 rad]
, [x
2
(t
0
), y
2
(t
0
),
2
(t
0
)]
= [3.5 m,
1.5 m, 0 rad]
, [x
3
(t
0
), y
3
(t
0
),
3
(t
0
)]
= [4.5 m, 1.5 m,
0 rad]
. We ran two tests for different scenarios. In the first, the

robots are required to follow three parallel sinusoidal paths, while
in the second, one of the robot coincides with the center of the
virtual structure which moves along a straight line and the other
two robots move on two sinusoidal paths. Fig. 6 presents the ref-
erence and the actual robot trajectories. The path tracking errors
x
i
x
di
, y
i
y
di
are shown in Figs. 7 and 8. Indeed, these errors
exhibit a steady-state value of 0.2 m; this is due to the dependence
of the steady errors upon the loop gain, and because we introduced
small values for the control gains (to avoid saturating the motors),
the errors drifted away fromzero. Fig. 9 reports the orientation er-
ror
i
di
. Linear and angular velocities are plotted in Figs. 10 and
11 respectively; these show that the robots travel along their path
with a common velocity, and the formation is experimentally suc-
cessful. In the second experimental scenario, the first mobile robot
is forced to move on a straight line which coincides with the center
of the virtual structure, and the other two robots move on two op-
posite sinusoidal paths (see Fig. 12). The experimental linear and
angular velocities in this scenario are reported in Figs. 13 and 14,
respectively. Note from Fig. 13 how the first robot moves with a
constant velocity while the other two robots move with varying
velocity to preserve the formation.
7. Conclusion
This paper has proposed a methodology for formation control of
a group of unicycle-type mobile robots represented at a kinematic
level and a dynamic level. The approach that has been developed
is mainly based on a combination of the virtual structure and path
following approaches. The controller is designed in such a way that
the derivative of the path parameter is left as an additional control
input to synchronize the formation motion. Real-time experiments
on a multi-robot platformshowed the effectiveness of the theoret-
ical results. Future work is to design an observer for both kinematic
Fig. 14. Evolution of the angular velocities in the second scenario.
and dynamic models to estimate unavailable signals such as veloc-
ities or orientation error tracking. Moreover, the impact of sensor
noise on the systemperformance can be further alleviated by using
state filter estimators.
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Jawhar Ghommam was born in Tunis, Tunisia, in 1979.
He received his B.Sc. degree from Institut Nationale des
Sciences Appliques et de Technologies (INSAT), Tunisia,
in 2003, his M.Sc. degree in Control Engineering from
the Laboratoire dInformatique, de Robotique et de Micro-
electronique (LIRMM), Montpellier, France, in 2004, and
his Ph.D. in Control Engineering and Industrial Computing
in 2008, jointly from the Universit of Orlans, France,
and Ecole Nationale dIngnieurs de Sfax, Tunisia. He is an
Assistant Professor of Control Engineering at the Institut
Nationale des Sciences Appliques et de Technologies
(INSAT), Tunisia. He is a Member of the research unit on MEChatronics and
Autonomous systems (MECA). His research interests include nonlinear control
of underactuated mechanical systems, adaptive control, guidance and control of
underactuated ships and cooperative motion of nonholonomic vehicles.
Hasan Mehrjerdi received his B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Electrical
Engineering from Ferdowsi University of Mashhad and
Tarbiat Modares University of Tehran, respectively. He
is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Electrical and Robotics
Engineering as a member of the GREPCI lab at the
Universit du Qubec (Ecole de technologie suprieure).
His research interests include mobile robotics, artificial
intelligence, mobile sensor networks and mobile robot
coordination in known and unknown environments.
Maarouf Saad received his Bachelor and Master degrees
in Electrical Engineering from Ecole Polytechnique of
Montreal in 1982 and 1984, respectively. In 1988, he
received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from McGill
University. He joined Ecole de technologie suprieure in
1987, where he is teaching control theory and robotics
courses. His research is mainly in nonlinear control and
optimization applied to robotics and flight control system.
Faal Mnif received his M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in Con-
trol and Robotics from the Ecole Polytechnique de Mon-
treal, in 1991 and 1996, respectively. Dr. Mnif is an
Associate Professor of Control Engineering and Robotics
at the National Institute of Applied Sciences and Tech-
nology, Tunis, Tunisia. He is currently on leave to Sultan
Qaboos University, Oman, where he is holding a faculty
position with the Department of Electrical and Computer
Engineering. He is also a Member of the Research Unit on
Mechatronics and Autonomous Systems, Tunisia. His main
research interests include robot modeling and control,
control of autonomous vehicles, modeling and control of holonomic and nonholo-
nomic mechanical systems, and robust and nonlinear control.
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Control Engineering
Engineers, Part I: Journal of Systems and
Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical
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The online version of this article can be found at:
DOI: 10.1243/09596518JSCE914
2010 224: 995 Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Part I: Journal of Systems and Control Engineering
J Ghommam, H Mehrjerdi and M Saad
Coordinated path-following control for a group of mobile robots with velocity recovery
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Coordinated path-following control for a group of
mobile robots with velocity recovery
J Ghommam
1
*, H Mehrjerdi
2
, and M Saad
2
1
Research Unit on Intelligent Control, Design, and Optimization of Complex Systems (ICOS), University of Sfax, Sfax,
Tunisia
2
Department of Electrical Engineering, Ecole de technologie superieure, Quebec Canada
The manuscript was received on 17 October 2009 and was accepted after revision for publication on 26 May 2010.
DOI: 10.1243/09596518JSCE914
Abstract: This paper addresses the problem of coordinated path following where multiple
mobile robots are required to follow a prescribed path while keeping a desired inter-robot
formation pattern. A combination of the Lyapunov techniques and graph theory is used to
derive the formation architecture. Path following for each vehicle consists of converging the
geometric error at the origin. Vehicles coordination is achieved by adjusting the speed of each
vehicle along its path according to information on the positions and speeds of a subset of the
other vehicles of the group. Unlike previous research that assume availability of the reference
velocity to each mobile robot, the situation is considered where this information is only
available to a leader of this formation. The control scheme relies on an adaptive design to
estimate the reference velocity which the other mobile robots need to reconstruct to recover
the desired formation. Simulations results are presented and discussed.
Keywords: path-following, formation control, Lyapunov technique, graph theory, adaptive
control, time-varying system, nested Matrosov theorem
1 INTRODUCTION
In the past fewdecades, decentralized coordination of
autonomous vehicles has become an active area of
research and has attracted the attention of multi-
disciplinary researchers because of its potential appli-
cations in both civilian and military sectors. Many
efforts have been directed towards the deployment of
groups of networked autonomous mobile robots that
interact autonomously with one another and with the
environment to improve significantly the efficiency,
performance, reconfigurability, and robustness that
individual vehicles currently cannot perform. The
main challenge in coordination of mobile robots is to
achieve a common group behaviour while they ex-
change information about their position. From a
control engineering point of view, coordination can
be roughly understood as controlling the position and
orientation of a group of mobile robots while they
move forward to track a designated reference point
that can be elected as a leader within the group, or
just simply a virtual target that moves along the path
with a prescribed dynamic.
During the last few years, several motion coordina-
tion algorithms have been developed in the literature.
Among the typical algorithms for motion coordination,
two outstanding schemes that are currently arousing
the researchers interest are the formation stability and
the agreement problem. Fax and Murray [1] analyses
the stability of vehicles behaviour modelled as a first-
order system relying on graph theory that captures the
inter-vehicle communication topology. Ren [2], [3]
contrived new consensus-type techniques to solve
formation control problems for second-order systems
or systems that can be converted to double-integrator
dynamics via a feedback linearization. Formation con-
trol based on a consensus-type algorithm for vehicles
with non-holonomic constraints were considered by
Ren and Atkins [4]. However, the non-holonomic kine-
matics are transformed to double-integrator dynamics
by controlling the hand position instead of the inertial
*Corresponding author: Research Unit on Intelligent Control,
Design, and Optimization of Complex Systems (ICOS), University
of Sfax, Sfax Engineering School, BP W, 3038 Sfax, Tunisia.
email: jghommam@gmail.com
995
JSCE914 Proc. IMechE Vol. 224 Part I: J. Systems and Control Engineering
position of the vehicles. Consequently, the vehicle
heading is not controlled. Most of those works model
the agents as point robots and consider only position
control; in numerous applications the orientation of
the agents plays an important role, which means that
the agents must be modelled as rigid bodies. Taking
into account the position and orientation of the rigid
bodies in a formation of a team of mobile robots,
Breivik et al. [5] proposed a guided formation control
scheme based on a modular design procedure that
makes the design completely decentralized in the
sense that no variables need to be communicated
between the formation members. In reference [6] the
problem of coordinated path following of multiple-
wheeled robots was solved by resorting to linearization
and gain scheduling techniques. Even though this
solution is quite simple, it lacks global results, that is
convergence of the vehicles to their paths and to the
desired formation pattern is only guaranteed locally. In
reference [7], the authors proposed a tracking con-
sensus protocol for multi-agents with an active leader
each modelled as a second-order dynamics and fur-
ther explored the situation where the velocity of the
active leader is unknown beforehand. An observer
implemented on each follower to estimate the leaders
velocity is presented. Recently Peng and Yang [8]
extended this consensus protocol to account for time-
varying delay in channel communication. The results
from the aforementioned two papers are basically
obtained for linear agents or fully actuated systems,
the dynamics of which can be converted through
feedback linearization to double-integrator dynamics.
This would limit the application of the derived con-
sensus protocol to general non-holonomic systems.
Motivated by these considerations, the problem
of coordinated path-following control has recently
come to the forum [911]. The strategy adopted to
resolve such a problem unfolds into two main points.
The first is the path following where the objective is to
design a local control law that steers each mobile
robot to its desired path and moves it along with a
fixed velocity [12, 13]. The second is the coordination,
where the objective is to adjust each vehicles velocity
in order to synchronize it with the overall formation
speed, which is known beforehand to all vehicles in
the formation, and develop a coordinated controller
which makes use of this information. A challenging
problem will be to consider that this information is
only available to one leader in the formation.
In the current paper, a coordinated motion control
strategy is derived for multiple mobile robots that
builds on the authors previous work [14]. The tech-
niques proposed by Ghabcheloo et al. [10, 15] we
exploited to handle the constraints imposed by the
topology of the intervehicle communications net-
work. The controller is derived in two stages: first, a
path-following control law is used that drives each
vehicle to its assigned path, regardless of the tem-
poral speed profile adopted. This is done by making
each vehicle approach a given virtual target that
moves along the path. Second, the speed of the
virtual target is adjusted to synchronize their posi-
tion, thus achieving the coordination of the mobile
robot along the paths. Unlike the work presented in
references [10], [14], and [15] where by which authors
assumed that the reference velocity is available to
each vehicle within the group, in this paper, using the
framework proposed by Bai et al. [16], this assump-
tion is relaxed to the situation where only one leader
possesses this information while the other members
reconstruct the velocity profile to recover the desired
formation pattern.
The paper is organized as follows. Section 2 recalls
the model for a unicycle-type mobile robot and for-
mulates the path following and coordination pro-
blem. Section 3 gives a solution to path following for
a single mobile robot followed by a strategy to co-
ordinate multiple mobile robots along their paths by
considering the topology of the intervehicle com-
munication. Section 4 examines the situation where
velocity speed of the formation is only known by a
leader; an adaptive design is presented to show how
the follower members estimate this velocity in order
to recover the desired formation. Section 5 discusses
robustness of the coordination controllers with re-
spect to disturbances and time delay of the informa-
tion being transmitted through the communication
channel due to imperfections in low-cost hardware.
Section 6 illustrates the performance of the path-
following controller together with the adaptive design
through numerical simulation. Finally, in section 7,
conclusions and newdirections for research are given.
1.1 Preliminaries
The notation in this paper is as follows. A para-
meterized path is a geometric curve
N
d
~ g
d
i
[ R
2
: As
i
[ R such that g~g
d
i

where g
d
i
is continuously parameterized by the path
variable s
i
. A path particle is said to have a certain
dynamic along its path g
d
i
if the time derivative of its
path variable converges to a given speed v
L
(t) as time
goes to infinity. The following restrictions are
imposed on the desired path: there exist positive
996 J Ghommam, H Mehrjerdi, and M Saad
Proc. IMechE Vol. 224 Part I: J. Systems and Control Engineering JSCE914
constants k
1i
and k
2
such that
C1
Lg
d
i
Ls
i
2
k
1
, Vs
i
C2 v
L
t k
2
Vt0
The first condition C1 means that the desired path
to be followed is regular with respect to the path
parameter s
i
. In case the path presents some sharp-
ness, one can divide the path into different regular
paths and treat each path separately. Condition
C2 implies that only the forward path following is
considered.
2 PROBLEM STATEMENT
The mathematical model for a unicycle-type mobile
robot with two actuated wheels, shown in Fig. 1, is
assumed to have the following form [17]
_ gg
i
~J
i
g
i
n
i
M
i
_ nn
i
zC
i
_ gg
i
n
i
zD
i
n
i
~F
i
1
where g
i
5[x
i
, y
i
, y
i
]
T
denotes the position (x
i
, y
i
), and
the heading y
i
of the ith robot in the earth fixed
frame OXY, see Fig. 1, n
i
5[v
1i
, v
2i
]
T
, with v
1i
and
v
2i
being the angular velocities of the wheels, F5
[F
1i
, F
2i
]
T
with F
1i
and F
2i
being the control torques
applied to the wheels of ith mobile robot. The mass
matrix M
i
, Coriolis matrix C
i
(g
i
), damping matrix D
i
,
and the rotation J
i
(g
i
), in equation (1) are given by
M
i
~
m
11i
m
12i
m
12i
m
11i
!
, D
i
~
d
11i
0
0 d
22i
!
C
i
_ gg
i
~
0 c
i
_
yy
i
{c
i
_
yy
i
0
" #
,
J
i
g
i
~
r
i
2
cos y
i
sin y
i
b
{1
i
cos y
i
sin y
i
{b
{1
i
" #
T
d
jji
, j 51, 2 are the damping coefficients and c
i
~
1=2b
i
r
2
i
m
c
i
a
i
, where a
i
is the distance from the
origin (x
i
, y
i
) to the centre of mass of the mobile
robot, b
i
and r
i
are defined in Fig. 1.
In the current paper, first the problem is con-
sidered of forcing the ith mobile robot to follow
closely a virtual target moving with a desired speed
profile on a given planar path V parameterized by
(x
d
(s), y
d
(s)), with s being the path parameter. Assum-
ing that individual path following controller has
been implemented on each mobile robot, the aim is
then to coordinate the entire group of robots in order
to achieve the desired formation pattern. This will be
done by adjusting the speed profile of each mobile
robot within the group as a function of the para-
metrization states that capture the positions of the
virtual targets on their corresponding paths g
d
i
s
i
.
Having explained the two problems for path follow-
ing and coordination, the formation control objec-
tive boils down to designing a control system F for
each mobile robot such that
lim
t?
g
i
t {g
d
i
s
i

~0 2
lim
t?
s
i
{s
j

~0, lim
t?
_ ss
i
t {v
L
t j j~0 3
The first objective (2) means that each robot must
track its desired position and orientation, in the sense
that each robot moves on the path and its linear velo-
city is tangential to its own path; the second objective
(3) will guarantee that all the mobile robots are co-
ordinated and propagate along the paths with a com-
mon desired velocity.
3 CONTROL DESIGN
In previous work [14], the present authors proposed
an algorithm for the coordination of multiple mobile
robots using exclusively the backstepping technique
combined with the principle of the virtual structure
that yields uniformboundedness and asymptotic con-
vergence of the position error, as well as the coordi-
nation states. However, with this strategy, the forma-
tion control law designed for each robot required
Fig. 1 Interpretation of path-following errors for a
single mobile robot [14]
Coordinated path-following control for a group of mobile robots 997
knowledge of the path parameter state, the measure-
ments of position and heading errors of itself and the
other robots in the group which amounts to
significant intervehicle data communication and
this is not suitable for operations in environments
with restrictive communication options. In the follow-
ing, a slight modification of the method developed in
reference [14] is suggested to account for a small
amount of intervehicle communication.
3.1 Path-following design
In this subsection, the result obtained in reference
[14] is briefly recalled to solve the path-following
problem. Define the position error g
ei
in a frame
attached to the reference path V(s
i
) as the difference
between the positions of the robot and of the virtual
target, and j
i
the virtual target speed error
g
ei
~R
T
i
g
i
g
i
t {g
di
s
i
t
j
i
~_ ss
i
{v
L
t
4
where R(g) is an orthonormal transformation matrix.
Notice that in reference [14], the speed error state j
i
was defined as the error between the along-path
distance of vehicle i and the centre of the virtual
structure. Exploiting the technique design in refer-
ence [18], a local controller for F
i
has been designed
that makes the time derivative of the following
Lyapunov function
V
PF
i
~
1
2
g
ei
k k
2
z
1
2
n
T
i
M
i
n
i
z
1
2k
cc
i
j
2
i
5
takes the form
_
VV
PF
i
~{g
T
ei
Pg
ei
{n
T
i
K
n
ei
n
i
z
1
k
cc
i
j
i
_
jj
i
zd
i
g
ei

h i
6
where k
cc
i
is a positive gain, d
i
(g
ei
) captures the terms
associated to the speed error state j
i
,
P~
1 0 0
0 0 0
0 0 1
2
6
4
3
7
5, K
n
ei
is a positive matrix. To solve the path-following
problem, one needs to assign a feedback law for j
i
in
order to make V
1i
negative; this is done by choosing
_
jj
i
~{k
j
i
j
i
{d
i
g
ei
7
3.1.1 Proposition 3.1
The feedback law for F
i
for each mobile robot i
obtained in reference [14] together with equation
(7) solves the path-following problem. In particular
the path-following error g
ei
and the speed error j
i
converges asymptotically to zero as time goes to
infinity.
3.1.2 Remark 3.1
Notice that by construction, the term d
i
(g
ei
) goes to
zero since the path-following error states converge
asymptotically to zero. For the sequel, in order to
simplify the development, set d
i
(g
ei
) 50.
3.2 Coordinated controller
So far, a strategy has been designed regarding how to
steer a single mobile robot to move along a given
path with a desired speed profile. Consider now a
group of n mobile robots I : ~ 1, . . . , n f g, each with
its own path-following controller implemented on
board. To achieve coordination among the members
of the group, it is necessary to assign a common
speed profile to each path so that the mobile robots
propagate along them while holding a specified
geometric formation pattern. Inspired by the work
of Ghabcheloo et al. [10, 15], a control variable is
introduced in the form of a correction term v
cc
i
t
that is added to the feedback law (7); this signal will
serve as an additional controller to be designed in
order to achieve coordination of the vehicles. The dyna-
mics of the coordination subsystem with d
i
(g
ei
) 50 can
therefore be written as follows
_ ss
i
~j
i
zv
L
t
_
jj
i
~{k
j
i
j
i
zv
cc
i
t
8
To take into account the communication constraints
among the vehicles, the neighbourhood set N
j
is
defined that represents the set of vehicles that com-
municate with vehicle i, that is all vehicles that
exchange information with vehicle i. The restriction is
that a vehicle in the formation only exchanges its
coordination state s
i
with its neighbour in the topo-
logy communication. To solve the coordination pro-
blem, the following decentralized coordination law for
v
cc
(t) is proposed as follows
v
cc
i
t ~{k
cc
i
X
j [ N
j
s
i
{s
j

9
where k
cc
i
is the positive gain introduced in equation
(5). The coordination subsystem together with the
coordination control law can be rewritten in compact
form as
_ ss~jzv
L
t 1
_
jj~{K
j
j{K
cc
Ls
10
where s~s
i

i [ I
, j~j
i

i [ I
, 1~1
i [ I
, and the n6n
matrix L is the Laplacian of an undirected graph G
that models the underlying communication topology of
the robots in formation. It is well known (e.g. see
references [10] and [12] for more details) that L
T
5
L5MM
T
>0 and L15M150 where M is the inci-
dence matrix of the graph that captures the topology
communication among the mobile robots.
3.2.1 Proposition 3.2
Consider the coordination subsystem (8) with d
i
(g
ei
) 5
0 and assume that the graph that models the
communication topology G is connected. Let L be
the Laplacian of G and K
j
~diag k
j
i

and K
cc
~
diag k
cc
i
be two positive definite diagonal matrices.
The decentralized coordination control (9), solves the
coordination problem defined in equation (3).
3.2.2 Proof
Define the graph-induced coordination error X~
M
T
s, the closed loop (10) rewrites
_
XX~M
T
j
_
jj~{K
j
j{K
cc
MX
11
where the property has been used that M
T
v
L
(t)1 50.
Let the Lyapunov function
V
cc
~
1
2
j
T
K
{1
cc
jz
1
2
X
T
X 12
The time derivative of V
cc
equation (10) is
_
VV
cc
~{j
T
K
{1
cc
K
j
j
which is negative semi-definite. Note that V
cc
implies
that j 50 and in turn implies that M
T
s 50, and in
consequence Ls 50. Since V
cc
is radially unbounded
and the system is time invariant, then a direct
application of the LaSalles invariance principle [19]
shows that the origin is globally asymptotically
stable, which completes the proof.
3.2.3 Remark 3.2
With the above coordination control law (9), it was
shown that the coordination problem is simply
reduced to aligning the coordination states s
i
asymp-
totically, that is making s
i
2s
j
R0 as t R. The
coordination control can, however, be extended to
achieve different convergence results such as the
differences in the information states converge to
desired values, i.e. s
i
2s
j
RD
ij
(t), where D
ij
(t) 5
d
i
2d
j
denotes the desired (time-varying) deviation
between s
i
and s
j
. The coordination control law (9)
can be modified as
v
cc
i
t ~
_
dd
i
t zk
j
i
d
i
{k
cc
i
X
j [ N
j
s
i{d
i

{ s
j
{d
j

13
The following corollary for relative state deviations
can be given.
3.2.4 Corollary 3.1
The coordination control law (13) ensures that
s
i
2s
j
RD
ij
(t) as t R if and only if directed graph
G is connected.
3.2.5 Proof
Defines
i
5s
i
2d
i
,j
5j2d
(t),whered(t) 5[d
1
, d
2
, , d
n
]
T
andthe coordinationerror as
~
XX~M
T
~ss
Equations (11) canbe writtenas
_
~
XX~M
T
~
jj
_
~
jj
~
jj~{K
j
~
jj{K
cc
M
~
XX
14
The methodology used in the proof of Proposition 2 can
now be exploited to show that s
i
(t) Rs
j
(t) as t R if and
onlyifGisconnected. Therestoftheproofthenfollowsthe
fact that s
i
(t) Rs
j
(t) as t Ris equivalent to s
i
2s
j
RD
ij
(t)
as t R.
The architecture of the general coordinated path-
following control (CPFC) system can be summarized
in Fig. 2. In this figure, the complete control struc-
ture for vehicle i and interconnection between com-
municating vehicles in the formation are given along
with relevant equation number. Using wireless com-
munication, vehicles i and j communicate their path
parameter to each other. All other required informa-
tion for vehicle i is obtained locally using local
sensory information as shown in this figure.
4 ADAPTIVE DESIGN FOR FORMATION
VELOCITY RECOVERY
In section 3 it was assumed that the reference
velocity v
L
(t) assigned to each mobile robot in the
group is known. Now the situation is considered
where an elected leader within the group only knows
this information a priori, while the remaining
members estimate this reference velocity to recover
the desired formation pattern. Following reference
[16], it is assumed that the desired speed velocity
v
L
(t) is parameterized as
v
L
t ~w
i
t h 15
where h is available only to the leader and w
i
(t) is a
scalar function available to each mobile robot and
satisfies the persistent excitation (PE). which means
that for all t
0
>0
t
0
zz
t
0
w
i
t
2
dtc 16
with some constants f .0 and c .0. Since w
i
(t) is
time-varying it is required, that all the mobile robots
have synchronized clocks. To ensure coordination,
the remaining mobile robots must estimate the
unknown parameter h by h
i
and reconstruct v
L
(t)
from
^ vv
Li
t ~w
i
t
^
hh
i
17
For the sequel it is assumed that the leader is vehicle
i 51, thus the dynamic of s
1
is kept the same as in
equation (4) while the path parameters for the
remaining vehicles i.e. i 52, 3, , n and the
coordination control as well are replaced with
_ ss~
^
jjzv
L
t
_
^
jj
^
jj
i
~{K
j
^
jj{K
cc
Ls
18
where v
L
t ~v
L
t , ^ vv
Li
t
T
i [ I{ 1 f g
, the estimate velo-
city v
Li
(t) is now obtained from equation (17). It is
necessary to design an updated law for h
i
so that the
vehicles in the formation estimate the desired
velocity profile and synchronize with the leader,
that is s
i
5s
j
5s
1
. The following proposition solves
this new coordination problem.
4.1 Proposition 4.1
Consider the coordination subsystem described by
equation (18), where v
L
(t) is uniformly bounded and
piecewise continuous, and its components are
parameterized as equation (17) with the parameter
h
i
updated as
_
^
hh
^
hh~{CW
T
Ls 19
where h
5[h
i
]
16n
, W5diag(w
1
, , w
n
), and C5C
T
is
the adaptive gain matrix. Then the equilibrium point
(j
, Ls, h
) is globally uniformly asymptotically stable.

Fig. 2 Coordinated path-following control system architecture
4.1.1 Proof
The error variable h
i
is denoted by
~
hh
i
~
^
hh
i
{h, i~2, . . . ,n 20
Since the speed profile for the formation is known
for vehicle 1, then set h
1
50, w
1
51, and construct a
column vector h
5[h
1
, , h
n
]
T
. Clearly, from equation
(19) it can noted that
_
~
hh
~
hh~{CW
T
Ls 21
the coordination dynamic (18) with the update law
(21) can be written as follows
_ ss~
^
jjzv
L
1zW
~
hh
_
^
jj
^
jj~{K
j
^
jj{K
cc
Ls
_
~
hh
~
hh~{CW
T
Ls
22
To prove that the equilibrium point (j
, Ls, h
) is
globally uniformly asymptotically stable, the nested
Matrosov theorem [20] is used. The first auxiliary
function is as follows
V
1
~
1
2
^
jj
T
K
{1
cc
^
jjz
1
2
s
T
Lsz
1
2
~
hh
T
C
{1
~
hh
which time derivative along the solutions of the
second and the last equation of (22) yields the
following negative semi-definite derivative
_
VV
1
~{
^
jj
T
K
{1
cc
K
j
^
jj : ~Y
1
0 24
where the fact that Lv
L
1 50 has been used, thus
guaranteeing uniform global stability. The second
auxiliary function is
V
2
~
^
jj
T
Ls 25
The derivative of V
2
yields
_
VV
2
~
^
jj
T
L
^
jjz
^
jj
T
LW
~
hh{
^
jj
T
K
j
Ls{s
T
LK
cc
Ls
~{x
T
Qxz
^
jj
T
R
^
jjz
^
jj
T
LW
~
hh : ~Y
2
26
where x5(j
T
, s
T
L)
T
, Q~
P
1
2
K
j
1
2
K
j
K
cc
0
B
@
1
C
A, and R5P+L;
P is chosen such that Q>0 that is P k
2
j
.
4k
cc

I{L
where I is the identity matrix with appropriate
dimensions. Now it is claimed that
Y
1
~0[Y
2
0 27
To see this, note that Y
1
50 implies j
50 and it follows
that the last two terms of equation (26) cancel out, Y
2
becomes
_
VV
2
~{x
T
Qx0 28
Next, a third auxiliary function is introduced as follows
V
3
~{ L~ vv
L

T
s 29
where v
L
5Wh
. The time derivative of V

3
is given by
_
VV
3
~
_
^
hh
^
hh
T
WLsz
^
hh
T
_
WWLs{~ vv
T
L
L
^
jj{~ vv
T
L
LW
~
hh 30
where it is claimed that
Y
1
~0
Y
2
~0, [
_
VV
3
~{~ vv
T
L
L~ vv
L
: ~Y
3
0
31
To show equation (31), notice that Y
2
50 implies
j
5Ls 50, therefore the first and second terms of

equation (30) vanish. Equation (31) follows from the
definition of v
L
. At this final step another auxiliary
function is defined
V
4
~{
~
hh
T
F t
~
hh 32
where F t ~
t
e
t{t
W t W t
T
dt. Note that
_
FF t ~e
t
t
e
{t
W t W t
T
dt
ze
t
d
dt
t
e
{t
W t W t
T
dt
& '
~F t {W t W t
T
33
Consequently, the time derivative of the Lyapunov
function V
4
is given as
_
VV
4
~{
~
hh
T
F t
~
hhz~ vv
T
L
~ vv
L
{2
~
hh
T
F t
_
~
hh
~
hh : ~Y
4
34
and claim that
Y
2
~0, Y
3
~0[Y
4
~{ce
{f
~
hh
2
0 35
This can be shown easily since Y
3
50 implies that
v
L
50 and Y
2
50 implies that j
50 and Ls 50, it is
straightforward to conclude fromequation (19) that the
last two terms of equation (34) vanish.
Since Y
i
50, i 51, 2, 3, 4, this implies from the
nested Matrosov theorem [20] that the equilibrium
(g, Ls, h
) 5(0, 0, 0) is globally uniformly asymptoti-

cally stable. Since h
R0 then for the ith, i 52, , n

mobile robot, it can be seen that v
Li
Rv
L
(t). More-
over, since Ls R0, coordination of mobile robots is
achieved, that is s
i
5s
j
5s
1
for all i, j. This completes
the proof.
5 ROBUSTNESS DISCUSSION
The control laws for path following have been
designed under the assumption that there are no
environmental disturbances and the vehicle para-
meters are certain. However, in practice, there is
uncertainty in the kinematics and the dynamics
because some geometric parameters may not be
known exactly; there may also be uncertainty in the
map. In order to make the controller robust, some
robustifying terms can be added or it is possible to
resort to an adaptive version, as shown in reference
[14]. Under additive environmental disturbances,
namely the friction of the vehicles wheels on the
ground, it can still be shown that the path-following
error Ig
ei
I is ultimately uniformly bounded (UUB).
Boundedness can be reduced by changing the con-
trol gains if the frictions are not too large. Yet one
should also consider robustness from the sensory
point of view; one should consider:
(a) that sensors deliver uncertain responses;
(b) that different physical sensors, even if apparently
identical, may perform differently because of
slight differences in the electronics and mech-
anics or because of their different positions on
the robot.
Later, in the simulation results section, the case will
be considered where output variables of some sen-
sors may be noisy or some perturbations are added
to the model. The case is also considered of limited
and unreliable information exchange among the
robots, which can cause some communication delay.
6 NUMERICAL SIMULATIONS
In this section simulations are carried out for co-
ordinated control of a group of three identical mobile
robots to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed
controllers developed in this paper. First simulations
are run for the non-adaptive design in section 3.2. Two
different scenarios are proposed: first, in the absence
of disturbances the coordination control is simulated
to execute an in-line formation, that is the three
mobile robots are requested to follow a sinusoidal
path by having them aligned along a common vertical
line. In the second step of the simulations, the three
vehicles are considered in the coordination process
while the formation shapes are reconfigured on the
fly, along three concentric circles (i.e. for the first 50s
the coordinated vehicles are fixed to maintain an in-
line formation pattern, and then afterwards a trian-
gular shape for the rest of testing time). In a third step,
a formation of three vehicles along smoothly varying
reference trajectories is explored in non-ideal condi-
tions such that measurement noise is added to sensor
measurements, including uncertain terms like fric-
tion. Coordination control with delayed information is
illustrated for three robots executing an in-line forma-
tion in ideal conditions (i.e. without disturbances).
Finally, simulations are run for the adaptive design
of section 4, in which the reference velocity v
L
(t) 5
4sin(t) m/s 5w(t)h, where w(t) 5sin(t) available for all
vehicles and h 54 is only available for vehicle 1 and
has to be estimated by the two remaining mobile
robots using the parametrization (17) and the update
law (19).
The physical parameters of the robot are taken
from [17]. The robots parameters are given in
Table 1.
m
11i
~0:25b
{2
i
r
2
i
m
i
b
2
i
zI
i

zI
wi
,
m
12i
~0:25b
{2
i
r
2
i
m
i
b
2
i
{I
i

m
i
~m
c
i
z2m
wi
, I
i
~m
c
i
a
2
i
z2m
wi
b
2
i
zI
ci
z2I
mi
6.1 Coordination in free environment
disturbances
In the first simulation, the reference trajectories are
taken as x
di
(s) 5s
i
and y
di
(s
i
) 510i sin(0.1s
i
) for all
i 51, , 3. Figure 3(a) shows the case where three
robots are required to move along a sinusoidal paths
as an in-line formation with a common speed
v
L
~2 m=s. It can be seen that all robots track their
reference trajectories well. Notice in Fig. 3(b) how
Table 1 Parameters of the mobile robot
r
i
0.15 m
b
i
0.75 m
a
i
0.3 m
m
ci
30 kg
m
wi
1 kg
I
ci
15.625 kg m
2
I
wi
0.005 kg m
2
I
mi
0.0025 kg m
2
vehicles adjust their speed along the path so as to
achieve coordinations. This could be explained as
follows: during the first few seconds, the vehicles
quickly move to reach their trajectories. As soon as
they are moving on their paths, the vehicles slow
down to wait for their neighbours in order to synchro-
nize as long as they propagate. In Fig. 3(c) and
Fig. 3(d) it can be observed that the position and
orientation tracking errors converge to zero and
remain there as Proposition 3.2 suggests.
6.2 Coordination with reconfiguration man euvre
Figure 4(a) displays a formation of three vehicles
changing shapes on the fly, where the robots pri-
marily achieve a straight line formation, followed by
a wedge formation (see Fig. 5). This example cap-
tures the situation where the robot in the apex of the
triangular shape enters a narrow tunnel and plays
the role of the formation leader, whereas the others
are free to move by coordinating their positions with
the leader. Figure 4(b) depicts the coordination errors
convergence. In the inline formation the coordination
errors s
1
2s
2
5s
1
2s
3
5s
2
2s
3
50 converge to zero. In
the triangle formation however s
1
2s
2
and s
1
2s
3
converge to 230 and s
2
2s
3
converges to zero as desired.
6.3 Coordination in an uncertain environment
A problem of growing importance in any environ-
ments is the location of mobile robots. It is con-
sidered that the fleet of vehicles is located through
global positioning system (GPS) sensor. Uncorrected
GPS signals may come in different forms and arise
from a variety of different sources, namely, the high-
signal-frequency noise and the long-term drift [21].
In order to perform realistic simulations, a high-
frequency noise introduced into the range sensing is
considered, which has a normal distribution of 0.2m
2
variance. Friction is also introduced, in the dyna-
mic model of equation (1) and represented as the vec-
tor F
i 5[a
1i
sign(v
i
) +b
1i
v
i
, a
2i
sign(w
i
) +b
2i
w
i
]
T
, where
a
1i
50.05, a
2i
50.25, b
1i
50.01, and b
2i
50.3 for all
vehicles in the formation. For the second scenario,
the reference paths are chosen as follows: for the first
30 s, x
di
(s
i
) 5s
i
, y
di
560 tanh(0.1s
i
) +10(i 21) and x
d
5
(50+10i) 10sin(0.1s
i
), y
d
510i cos(0.1s
i
) +50 (for all
i 51, , 3) for the rest of the simulation time. This
choice implies that the reference path is a hyperbolic
path for the first 30 s and is a circle for the remaining
time. Figure 6(a) illustrates the transient behaviour of
the formation vehicles as they assemble and main-
tain a triangular form with constant pattern D5
Fig. 3 Coordination of three wheeled robots along a sinusoidal paths
[D
ij
]
361
5[22.5, 1.5, 22.5]
T
. Figure 6(c) depicts the
error position y
ei
, i 51, ,3 and shows their
convergence to zero even in the presence of high-
frequency noises and frictions. Notice, however the
high initial error of robots 1 and 3, which is attri-
butable to the fact that the reference trajectories start
at some points that are far from the initial robots
positions. It is also of interest to notice from Fig. 6(d)
that the robots initially move with a fast oscillating
heading until they reach their desired path, then
exhibit a steady-state error with mean value of 0.1 rad,
which varies a little at the change in the radius of the
reference trajectories, then recovers to previous mean
steady-state values. Figure 6(b) shows how vehicles
adjust their speed along the path so as to achieve
coordinations. It can be observed that when vehicles
keep tracking a straight line path their linear velocities
are almost the same; however, at the break point
when the radius of the reference trajectories changes,
linear velocities are no longer the same to keep the
formation pattern intact.
6.4 Effect of time delay on coordination
In most applications, the information being trans-
mitted in a network of mobile robots usually exhibits a
time delay t. To illustrate the effect of time delay on
the coordination process, a simple formation problem
is considered of three wheeled mobile robots along
parallel straight lines. If there is a small communica-
tion delay in the range of [0s, 0.5s], according to Figs 7
(a) and (b) the coordinated controllers still work and
this shows that the controllers are robust to small
communication delay. However, if this delay exceeds
this range (e.g. see Figs 7(b) and (c)), the coordinated
controllers fail and the error coordinating states will
no longer converge to zero.
6.5 Coordination with velocity recovery
Finally, simulations are shown for three wheeled
mobile robots moving in formation along three
rectilinear paths using the proposed adaptive design
in which the velocity v
L
(t) 5h
1
sin(t) is time varying
and is only available for mobile robot 1; that is for
robot 1, the parameter h
1
54, whereas the other two
vehicles have to estimate this velocity according to
equation (15) and the update law (19). It is clear from
Fig. 8(a) that with the adaptive design from section 4,
the coordination states converge altogether to zero as
t R. Figure 8(b) illustrates how well the parameter
convergence is guaranteed. Figure 8(c) shows that the
speed dynamic of each path parameter converges to
the reference velocity (objective (3)), and Fig. 8(d)
illustrates that the estimated velocities v
L2
(t) and
v
L3
(t) converge to the corresponding reference velo-
cities v
L1
(t) 54 sin(t).
7 CONCLUSIONS
The current paper has addressed the problem of
manouering a group of mobile robots along a given
Fig. 4 Coordination of three wheeled robots with reconfiguration manouevre
Fig. 5 Desired formation configuration
path, while holding a desired intervehicle formation
pattern. The coordination scheme is first executed
while taking into account that the reference velocity
is known for all members of the group. Second, the
proposed solution is then extended to consider
coordination where the reference velocity is only
available to an elected leader in the formation, while
the other mobile robots estimate this information
with an adaptive design. The solution proposed is
built on an adaptive Lyapunov-based technique and
graph theory. Stability analysis of the coordination
control with velocity recovery is carried out by using
Matrosovs generalized theorem. Current work is
underway to implement the proposed coordination
controller to real prototypes. Future work will extend
the coordination controller in the current paper to
Fig. 6 Coordination of three wheeled robots along piecewise paths
Fig. 7 Time history of the coordination error states with different time delays
robust adaptive control in order to compensate for
non-model dynamics, sensors, and actuators pertur-
bations and unknown environments.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The authors are very grateful to the anonymous
reviewers for insightful remarks and for useful
comments on an earlier draft.
F Authors 2010
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with the adaptive design
Published in IET Control Theory and Applications
Received on 15th August 2010
Revised on 28th April 2011
doi: 10.1049/iet-cta.2010.0478
ISSN 1751-8644
Adaptive coordinated path following control
of non-holonomic mobile robots with
quantised communication
J. Ghommam
1
H. Mehrjerdi
2
M. Saad
2
F. Mnif
1,3
1
Research Unit on Mechatronics and Autonomous Systems, ENIS, Tunisia Ecole Nationale dIngenieurs de Sfax, Tunisia
2
Department of Electrical Engineering, E
cole de Technologie Supe rieure, 1100, rue Notre-Dame Ouest Montreal, Que bec,
Canada
3
E-mail: jghommam@gmail.com
Abstract: In this study, Lyapunov-based technique and graph theory are combined to address the problem of coordinated path
following where multiple mobile robots are required to follow some prescribed paths while maintaining a desired inter-robot
formation pattern. The authors address this problem by developing decentralised feedback law that drives each robot to its
desired path while adjusting its speed to the nominal velocity prole based on the exchange of information with its
neighbours. The decentralised feedback law builds upon a non-linear control strategy with integral actions, that decouples the
path following from the coordination control problem, the obtained subsystems are shown to be in a cascade connection of
each other and therefore the stability of the entire closed-loop system is guaranteed by the small-gain theorem. The authors
explicitly address the situation where the exchange of information among mobile robots takes place according to a quantised
communication network and provide conditions under which the complete coordinated path-following closed-loop system is
stable. Finally, the theoretical results are validated by simulations on a platform of three mobile robots.
1 Introduction
There has been considerable interest over recent decades
in developing advanced navigation control algorithms for
non-holonomic/underactuated mobile robots to steer them
accurately and reliably in their environment. Representative
navigation control problems for non-holonomic mobile
robots are trajectory tracking and path-following control
problems. The signicant difference between the two
methods is that in path following the main goal is to drive
the robot towards a geometrical dened path without any
need for temporal requirement. This is in striking contrast
to trajectory tracking where temporal specication for the
control design is needed. For a single mobile robot
operating in a free environment, the trajectory tracking
control problem has been extensively studied in [16].
Whereas the path following, which is of particular interest
for non-holonomic systems has been considered in [79].
Formation control of cooperative wheeled mobile robots is
another progressing research area which continues to receive
considerable interest from the control and robotics
community because of its challenging problems and
applications. Typical applications are environmental
monitoring, rescue missions, distributed transportation,
multi-point surveillance etc. When comparing the mission
outcome of a group of multi-robots operating in the same
environment with that of a single robot, it can be easily
seen that the overall performance of the multi-mobile robots
working cooperatively is highly improved. Motivated by
this challenging engineering aspects of formation control,
some results have been reported in the literature in
designing cooperative control laws for a team of wheeled
mobile robots. In [10, 11], the authors proposed a formation
controller based on a centralised scheme where only a
single controller is responsible for the generation of free
trajectories collision among the vehicles. The adopted
approach though is constructive and guarantees a complete
solution but lacks robustness to the communication losses
and agents failure. Decentralised schemes, however, require
less computational efforts compared to the centralised
schemes and are less affected by errors in communication
or even in the presence of members failure. In [12], a
decentralised approach for formation manoeuvre of vehicles
with non-holonomic constraints is presented. Nevertheless,
with this approach the vehicle heading cannot be controlled.
Based on an extended consensus algorithm, the authors in
[13] proposed a unied distributed approach for group
formation control of multiple-vehicles with an arbitrary
number of leaders by allowing an arbitrary information ow
among vehicles, the proposed algorithm however assumes
that each vehicle in the formation is represented by a
single-integrator dynamic. Recently, the authors in [14]
have proposed a general framework for cooperative control
of multiple non-holonomic mobile robots in chained form.
www.ietdl.org
The cooperative controller derived for each vehicle is
designed with the aid of s-processes and notions from
graph theory, the cooperative controller is then extended to
consider delay and switching communication problems.
However, most of the aforementioned papers are based on
the kinematics of the vehicles. Yet, in practice the dynamics
of mobile robots are often complex and cannot be ignored
or severely simplied for cooperative control design
purposes. For this reason few have considered the dynamic
and uncertainty in the vehicles model to design
decentralised cooperative controllers. Recently in [15],
based on Lyapunov techniques and graph theory, a robust
cooperative controller was designed such that each mobile
robot converges to a target point that moves on a desired
trajectory. However with this approach, a PE (persistent
excitation) condition involving reference signal (needed to
generate the desired trajectory) is imposed to facilitate the
control design. Owing to the high dependence on the
reference model, performance of cooperative controllers
are often limited because of constraints imposed on the
generated trajectory. For practical implementations, several
researchers have investigated the coordinated path-following
control problem [1621] where a group of mobile robots
are required to follow with specic speed dynamic, some
generated reference paths while holding a desired geometric
pattern. In the aforementioned papers addressing the
coordinated path-following control problem, the quality of
the data being sent throughout the network is assumed to be
reaching its destination without any losses or distortions.
furthermore, the developed coordinated path-following
controllers for wheeled mobile robots [17, 18, 20] have the
drawback of being susceptible to perturbations associated
with sensors noises.
In this paper, we examine the developed framework for
controlling single non-holonomic mobile robot [22] and
seek to expand it to be used in coordinated path-following
control. The coordinated path-following control design
takes the robot dimensions and dynamics into account and
consists of an adaptive control part that serves to deal with
parametric uncertainty and includes integral action from one
hand to compensate for the perturbations associated with
sensors noises noises and on the other hand to compensate
for trajectory tracking manoeuvre while avoiding the need
to have some restrictive conditions on the reference
trajectory to be persistently exciting (PE). The main
contributions of this paper are two folds. The rst is to
solve the path-following control problem individually for
each mobile robot having access to local measurements.
The solution forces the mobile robot to move on a
predened path while guaranteeing a conveniently
predened error to converge to a ball centred around the
origin. Second, the synchronisation technique is combined
with the non-linear controller designed for a single mobile
robot to obtain a formation-control algorithm for the
coordination of multiple mobile robots. Robots coordination
is obtained by varying the speed of each mobile robot along
its path according to the relative position broadcasted by the
neighbouring robots. The resulting closed-loop system
basically consists of two interconnected subsystems: The
path-following subsystem and the coordination subsystem.
The interconnected structure motivates the use of the small-
gain theorem, particularly the input-to-state-state (ISS type)
small-gain theorem [23] to conclude about the overall
stability of the system. Therefore the adaptive path-
following controller is designed in such way that the path-
following subsystem is ISS with respect to the coordination
states. The coordination controller in turn is designed based
on the graph theory [24, 25] to achieve ISS with respect to
path-following errors. The stability of the entire closed-loop
system is veried by the conditions of the small-gain
theorem. Further, we consider the situation where each
robot possesses a quantised estimate of the relative position
of a subset of a neighbour robots at each time. We
rigorously show that if the communication graph that
captures the underlying communication network topology is
connected and under some conditions derived from the
small-gain theorem, then the path-following coordinated
problem is robustly solved.
The subsequent sections are organised as follows: Section
2 presents the dynamics of each mobile robot and the
formation control objective. Section 3 gives solutions to the
control problem of single vehicle adaptive path following as
well as a strategy for multiple vehicle coordination built on
Lyapunov and graph theory. Simulation results are given in
Section 4 to validate the effectiveness of the proposed
control design. Finally Section 5 concludes the paper.
Notation and notions: The notation in this paper is as follows:
a parameterised path is a geometric curve
V
di
= {X
i
[ R
m
:s
i
[ R such that X
i
= X
di
(s
i
)}
where X
di
is continuously parameterised by the path variable s
[26]. A continuous function a:R
+
R
+
is said to belong to
class K if it is strictly increasing and satises a(0) 0. A
continuous function b(., .):R
+
R
+
R
+
is said to
belong to a class KL if, for each xed u and for all r, the
function b(r,u) belongs to class K with respect to r, and for
each xed r, the function b(r,u) is decreasing with respect
to u and b(r,u) 1 as u 1.
2 Problem statement
2.1 Robot dynamics
In this section, we consider a multi-robot system composed of
N agents modelled as unicycle-type vehicle moving on the
plane, of which each has the following dynamics [27]
h
i
= J
i
(h
i
)v
i
M
i
v
i
+C
i
( h
i
)v
i
+D
i
v
i
= t
i
(1)
where h
i
[x
i
, y
i
, c
i
]
T
denotes the position (x
i
, y
i
), and the
heading c
i
of the robot i in the earth xed frame OXY
(Fig. 1), v
i
[v
1i
, v
2i
]
T
, with v
1i
and v
2i
being the
angular velocities of the wheels of the robot i. t
i
[t
1i
,
t
2i
]
T
with t
1i
and t
2i
being the control torques applied to
the wheels of the robot i. The rotation J
i
(h
i
), mass matrix
M
i
, Coriolis matrix C
i
( h
i
) and damping matrix D
i
in (1) are
given by
J
i
(h
i
) =
r
i
2
cos(c
i
) sin(c
i
) b
1
i
cos(c
i
) sin(c
i
) b
1
i
_ _
`
,
M
i
=
m
11i
m
12i
m
12i
m
11i
_ _
D
i
=
d
11i
0
0 d
22i
_ _
, C
i
( h
i
) =
0 c
i

c
i
c
i

c
i
0
_ _
www.ietdl.org
with
c
i
=
1
2b
i
r
2
i
m
ci
a
i
m
11i
=
1
4b
2
i
r
2
i
(m
i
b
2
i
I
i
) +I
wi
m
12i
=
1
4b
2
i
r
2
i
(m
i
b
2
i
I
i
)
m
i
= m
ci
+2m
wi
I
i
= m
ci
a
2
i
+2m
wi
b
2
i
+I
ci
+2I
mi
(2)
where m
ci
and m
wi
are the masses of the body and the wheels
with a motor. I
ci
, I
wi
and I
mi
are the moments of inertia of the
body about the vertical axis through O
bi
(centre of mass), the
other physical parameters r
i
, a
i
and b
i
are dened in Fig. 1,
and the non-negative constants d
11i
and d
22i
are the
damping coefcients.
For the purpose of the path-following control design in
Section 3 and the coordinated control design in Section 4,
we convert the wheel velocities v
1i
and v
2i
of the ith robot
to its linear velocity v
i
and angular velocity v
i
, by the
relationship
4
i
= B
1
i
v
i
, B
i
=
1
r
i
1 b
i
1 b
i
_ _
(3)
where 4
i
[v
i
, v
i
]
T
. It is noted that B
i
is invertible since
det(B
i
) 22b
i
/r
i
. With (3), we can write the robot
dynamics (1) in the following convenient form
h
i
= J
i
(h
i
)4
i
M
i
4
i
= C
i
( h
i
)4
i
D
i
4
i
+B
i
t
i
(4)
where
M
i
= B
1
i
M
i
B
i
, C
i
( p
i
) = B
1
i
C
i
( h
i
)B
i
D
i
= B
1
i
D
i
B
i
, B
i
= B
1
i
and
J
i
(h
i
) =
cos(c
i
) sin(c
i
) 0
0 0 1
_ _
`
2.2 Coordination control objective
In this paper we will study the coordinated path-following
control problem under the following assumption.
Assumption 1:
1. The dimensional terms r
i
, a
i
and b
i
of the mobile robot i
are known. The terms related to mass, inertia and damping,
m
11i
, m
12i
, d
11i
, d
12i
, c
i
, are unknown but constant.
2. The reference path to be tracked by mobile robot i is
V
i
(s
i
) [x
di
(s
i
), y
di
(s
i
)]
T
satises the following conditions:
there exist strictly positive constants 1
1i
and 1
2i
such that
1
1i
x
2
di
(s
i
) +y
2
di
(s
i
) 1
2i
where x
di
(s
i
) and y
di
(s
i
) are dened as
x
di
(s
i
) =
x
di
(s
i
)
s
i
, and y
di
(s
i
) =
y
di
(s
i
)
s
i
Remark 1: Item 1 in Assumption 1 implies that the
dimensional terms involving mass, inertia and damping are
often unknown and are not easily determined in this case
the matrices M
i
, D
i
and the coefcient of the entries of
C
i
( h
i
) should be estimated. In item 2, Assumption 1
implies that the path V
i
is regular with respect to the path
parameter s
i
. If the path is not regular, one can break it into
different regular paths and consider each path separately.
Remark 2: The set of paths to be followed by the mobile
robots can be simply obtained by considering parallel
translations of a ctive mother trajectory. This is useful in a
situation where the mobile robots cooperatively move to
reach their nal destinations at exactly the same time.
However, in our application, the paths to be followed are
not only limited to just parallel translation of a single path
but to general regular paths.
Having given the above notation, the problems of path
following and coordinated path following are dened
according to [19, 28] as follows.
2.2.1 Path-following problem: The main idea to solve
the path-following control problem is to make the ith
mobile robot approaches a virtual target that moves along
the path with a desired timing law. Let h
di
(s
i
) be the
position of the target and v
di
its desired rate of progression.
We decompose the control motion problem into a geometric
task that consists of making the position of the mobile
robot converges to and follows a desired geometric path
and a dynamic task that ensures the mobile robot to satisfy
the desired speed assignment along the path. The path-
following problem can be formulated as follows:
Problem 1 (Path following): Let h
di
(s
i
) [ R
3
be a desired path
parameterised by a continuous variable s
i
[ R and v
Li
(t) is a
desired speed assignment for vehicle i, design a control law
Fig. 1 Interpretation of path-following errors for a single mobile
robot [17]
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for t
i
, adaptation laws for M
i
, D
i
and C
i
( h
i
) and an update law
for s
i
, such that all closed-loop signals are bounded; specically
the position of the mobile robot converges to and remains inside
a tube centred around the origin (geometric task), while it moves
with a non-zero motion along the path (dynamic task), that is,
| s
i
v
Li
(t)| 0 as t 1.
Remark 3: It is worth noticing that the speed assignment
v
Li
(t) is not the actual velocity of the mobile robot along
the path, but it represents the rate at which the parameter s
i
evolves. Note also that in [19, 28], it is claimed that the
desired speed assignment v
Li
(t) is allowed to be function of
time and the path parameter s
i
but there is no explicit
expression that has been derived for it. In our approach,
however, the speed assignment will be designed as such it
is used as an additional control to allow the mobile robot to
seamlessly follow any given path with arbitrary curvature,
which expression will be given later.
2.2.2 Coordination problem: Consider now a group of
mobile robots I = {1, . . . , n}, each posses its own path-
following controller. To achieve coordination between the
agents of the group, we further require that the vehicles
once on their paths, they move in order to keep a desired
formation shape. One way among others [1618] is to
adjust the speed assignment of each mobile robot in the
formation as functions of its own path parameter s
i
and the
path parameter for the neighbouring mobile robot. In this
case, coordination of a pair (i, j ) of mobile robots occurs if
and only if s
i
s
j
or s
i
2s
j
0. This must be done by
controlling the progression rate of the path parameter s
i
of
each vehicle in the formation via suitably designed
coordination control law. The key idea in designing the
coordination controller is to introduce a correction term
v
di
for s
i
that will be used in such a way as to ensure
synchronisation of the coordination states.
Problem 2 (Coordination control): Consider a formation of n
mobile robots. Design a control law for the correction term v
di
as function of the parameterised paths s
i
and s
j
such that for all
i, j [ I the coordination error s
i
2s
j
approaches zero as
t 1 and the formation travel at a desired speed prole
v
r
(t), that is | s
i
v
r
(t)| converges to a small neighbourhood
of the origin as t 1, where the desired formation speed
prole is selected as follows
v
r
(t) = min{v
L1
(t), v
L2
(t), . . . , v
Li
(t), . . . , v
Ln
(t)} (5)
Remark 4: Notice that when the paths being followed by the
robots are identical, in ideal case when these robots are not
subject to disturbances, their desired speed assignment
v
Li
(t) is equal for all i [ I. In general case, however, the
speed assignment for each robot v
Li
(t) is no longer equal.
In order to obtain formation pattern, the coordination
controller must ensure that the group of robots move with a
common speed assignment, this explains the choice for the
formation speed prole v
r
(t) in (5).
3 Problem solution
This section provides a solution to the problems previously
posed. We start by detailing a control formulation for the
path-following problem. Inspired by recent work of [22] on
non-holonomic robot, we propose a global bounded
feedback for path following of a mobile robot that
guaranties a global boundedness and convergence of the
position error to a small neighbourhood of the origin.
3.1 Transform path-following errors
In this subsection, we will consider the dynamic (4) and
design the control t
i
for robot i to achieve the path-
following control objective (Problem 1) posed in Section
2. As often done in tracking control of mobile robots, we
rst interpret path-following errors in a frame attached to
the path V
i
(as shown in Fig. 1) such that the error
dynamics are of a triangular form to which the
backstepping technique can be applied
x
ei
y
ei
c
ei
=
cos(c
i
) sin(c
i
) 0
sin(c
i
) cos(c
i
) 0
0 0 1
x
i
x
di
y
i
y
di
c
i
c
di
(6)
where c
di
is the angle between the path and the X-axis dened
by
c
di
= arctan
y
di
(s
i
)
x
di
(s
i
)
_ _
(7)
where ()
is dened as the derivative of () with respect to s

i
that is (()
(()/s
i
)). In Fig. 1, OXY is the earth-xed
frame; O
i
X
i
Y
i
is a frame attached to the path V
i
such that
O
i
X
i
and O
i
Y
i
are parallel to the surge and sway axes of the
mobile robot, respectively; u
di
is the tangential to the path;
and O
bi
X
bi
Y
bi
is the body-xed frame. Therefore x
ei
, y
ei
and
c
ei
can be referred to as tangential, cross and heading
errors, respectively [22].
Differentiating both sides of (6) along the solution of the
rst equation of (1) results in the kinematic error dynamics:
x
ei
= v
i
v
di
cos(c
ei
) +y
ei
v
i
y
ei
= v
di
sin(c
ei
) x
ei
v
i
c
ei
= v
i
v
di
M
i
4
i
= C
i
( h
i
)4
i
D
i
4
i
+B
i
t
i
(8)
where we have dened
v
di
=
..................
x
di
(s
i
)
2
+y
di
(s
i
)
2
_
s
i
:= v
di
s
i
v
di
=
x
di
(s
i
)y
di
(s
i
) x
di
(s
i
)y
di
(s
i
)
x
di
(s
i
)
2
+y
di
(s
i
)
2
s
i
:= v
di
s
i
(9)
3.2 Path-following control design
The path-following kinematic errors together with the robot
dynamic is in strict feedback form, we will use the
backstepping technique to derive the control law t
i
. To take
into account the constant disturbances like friction and
noise sensors that might interfere with the measurement of
the robot position, we add extra integrators to the output of
the path-following error system for the simplicity of the
controller. The control design is divided into two main
stages. In the rst stage, we use the orientation error and
the linear velocity as virtual controls to stabilise the along
and the cross-track errors. The derivative of the path
parameter is used as an extra control input to ensure a non-
zero dynamic of the mobile robot along the path, at the last
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stage the control input t
i
will be designed using the
backstepping technique.
3.2.1 Stage 1: Kinematic control design:
Step 1 (Stabilising the (x
ei
, y
ei
)-dynamics): At this stage we
add two projection integrators to the position error
dynamics as
s
x
ei
= Proj
g
1i
x
ei
d
1i
, s
x
ei
_ _
s
y
ei
= Proj
g
2i
y
ei
d
1i
, s
y
ei
_ _
x
ei
= v
i
v
di
cos(c
ei
) +y
ei
v
i
y
ei
= v
di
sin(c
ei
) x
ei
v
i
(10)
where d
1i
=
..............
1 +x
2
ei
+y
2
ei
_
, g
1i
, g
2i
are positive constants.
The Proj operator is the Lipschitz projection algorithm,
details on its proprieties can be found in [29]. The use of
the projection algorithm in this case will guarantee that the
integrators s
x
ei
and s
y
ei
are bounded by some predened
constants. In preparation for the development that follows
we set the following variables
v
ei
= v
i
a
v
i
, c
ei
= c
ei
a
c
ei
, m
i
= s
i
v
Li
(t) (11)
where m
i
is the speed error, a
v
i
and a
c
ei
are virtual controls
for x
ei
and y
ei
, respectively, chosen as follows
a
v
i
= w
1i
s
x
ei
+v
di
v
Li
cos(c
ei
), w
2i
=
k
1i
x
ei
d
1i
(12)
a
c
ei
= arctan
w
2i
+s
y
ei
V
0i
_ _
, w
2i
=
k
2i
y
ei
d
1i
(13)
where V
0i
=
.............
v
2
d0
(t) +s
x
2
ei
_
, k
1i
and k
2i
are positive constants
to be determined later, the speed velocity v
d0
(t) is a common
nominal velocity known by all vehicles in the formation.
Substituting (12) into the third equation of (10) provides the
closed loop of x
ei
as
x
ei
= w
1i
s
x
ei
+v
ei
+y
ei
v
i
+6
1i
m
i
(14)
where we have dened 6
1i
= v
di
cos(c
ei
). Substituting (13)
into the last equation of (10) and imposing that the speed
dynamic v
Li
along each path satises the following dynamic
v
Li
=
..............................
v
2
d0
(t) +s
2
x
ei
+(w
2i
+s
y
ei
)
2
_
..................
x
di
(s
i
)
2
+y
di
(s
i
)
2
_ :=
v
Li
v
di
(15)
which yields the following closed-loop y
ei
-dynamic
y
ei
= w
2i
s
y
ei
+v
Li
D
i
x
ei
v
i
+6
2i
m
i
(16)
where D
i
= sin(c
ei
) cos(a
c
ei
) +( cos(c
ei
) 1) sin(a
c
ei
)) and
6
2i
= v
di
sin(c
ei
). For the clarity of expression we will drop
down the argument t from v
d0
and its derivative.
Step 2 (Stabilising the c
ei
-dynamic): In this step, we consider
v
i
as a control input to stabilise the c
ei
-dynamic, dene the
following variable
v
ei
= v
i
a
v
i
(17)
where a
v
i
is a stabilising function for v
i
to be determined.
The time derivative of the second equation of (11) along
the solutions of the third equation of (8) and (13) and
adding a projection integrator to the c
ei
-dynamic give
s
c
ei
= Proj
g
3i
c
ei
.........
1 +c
2
ei
_ , s
c
ei
ei
= 1
k
2i
V
0i
x
ei
v
Li
d
3
1i
_ _
(v
ei
+a
v
i
) +
V
0i
(P
i
+ s
y
ei
)
v
2
Li
(w
2i
+s
y
ei
)
v
2
Li
V
0i
(v
d0
v
d0
+s
x
ei
s
x
ei
)
k
2i
y
ei
x
ei
V
0i
d
3
1i
v
2
Li
v
ei
v
di
v
Li
+6
3i
m
i
(18)
where g
3i
is a positive constant and
P
i
=
k
2i
d
3
i
(v
di
v
Li
sin(c
ei
)(1 +x
2
ei
)
(a
v
i
v
di
v
Li
cos(c
ei
))x
ei
y
ei
)
6
3i
=
k
2i
(1 +x
2
ei
)V
0i
d
3
1i
v
2
Li
v
di

k
2i
y
ei
x
ei
V
0i
d
3
1i
v
2
Li
v
di
v
di
To stabilise c
ei
at the origin, we choose for the virtual control
a
v
i
the following expression
a
v
i
= 1
k
2i
V
0i
x
ei
v
Li
d
3
1i
_ _
1
_
k
3i
c
ei
.........
1 +c
2
ei
_ s
c
ei
+ v
di
v
Li

V
0i
(P
i
+ s
y
ei
)
v
2
Li
+
(w
2i
+s
y
ei
)
v
2
Li
V
0i
(v
d0
v
d0
+s
x
ei
s
x
ei
) v
Li
D
i
c
ei
_
, k
3i
. 0 (19)
Notice that the last term of (19) is included to cancel out the
cross term in the y
ei
-dynamic which is well dened since
lim
c
ei
0
sin(c
ei
)
c
ei
= 1 and lim
c
ei
0
cos(c
ei
) 1
c
ei
= 0
To make sure that (19) is well dened, we select an
appropriate gain k
2i
such that the term
1
k
2i
V
0i
x
ei
v
Li
d
3
1i
_ _
1
is not singular, in this respect we pick k
2i
such that
k
2i
min(v
d0
) 1
i
(20)
where 1
i
is a strictly positive value, determined from the
bound of s
x
ei
. Substituting (19) in (18), leads to the
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following closed-loop relation
ei
=
k
3i
c
ei
.........
1 +c
2
ei
_ s
c
ei
+ 1
k
2i
V
0i
x
ei
v
Li
d
3
1i
_ _
1
v
ei

k
2i
y
ei
x
ei
V
0i
d
3
1i
v
2
Li
v
ei
v
Li
D
i
c
ei
+6
3i
m
i
(21)
What has been made so far is to construct a kinematic
controller that allows the stabilisation of the position and
heading errors of each mobile robot with respect to its path.
We now proceed to design the actual control input t
i
and
update laws for unknown system parameters for each
mobile robot i, this will be detailed in stage 2 of the design.
3.2.2 Stage 2: Dynamic control design: The dynamic
controller is fed from the kinematic controller with
information about a desired references for linear and angular
velocities (i.e. from a
v
i
and a
v
i
), and will generate another
pair of linear and angular velocities to be transmitted to the
servos of robot i. The design of the dynamic controller is
basically based on a parametrisation of the dynamic model
of the robot. The dynamic part of robot i in terms of the
velocities error 4
ei
[v
ei
, v
ei
]
T
is written as
M
i
4
ei
= C
i
( h
i
)4
i
D
i
4
i
M
i
[ a
v
i
, a
v
i
]
`
+B
i
t
i
= D
i
4
ei
+F
i
Q
i
+B
i
t
i
(22)
with F
i
Q
i
being the linear parametrisation of the expression
C
i
( h
i
)4
i
D[a
vi
, a
v
i
]
`
M
i
[ a
v
i
, a
v
i
]
`
(see [17] for details), where F
i
refers to the regressor matrix
and Q
i
being the vector that collects all the unknown system
parameters, and are given, respectively, as
F
i
=
v
2
i
a
vi
a
v
i
a
vi
0 0 0 0
0 0 0 0 v
i
v
i
a
vi
a
v
i
a
v
i
_ _
Q
i
= c
i
b
i

d
11i

d
12i
m
1i
c
i
b
1
i

d
21i

d
22i
m
2i
_ _
`
(23)
with

d
11i
= 0.5(d
11i
+d
12i
),

d
12i
= 0.5b
i
(d
11i
d
12i
), m
11i
=
m
11i
+m
12i
,

d
21i
= 0.5b
1
i
(d
11i
d
22i
),

d
21i
= 0.5b
i
(d
11i
+
d
22i
) and m
1i
= m
11i
m
22i
. From (22) we choose the update
law for Q
i
and the actual control t
i
without cancelling useful
damping terms as (see (24))
Q
i
= Proj(G
i
F
`
i
4
ei
,

Q
i
)
where ( ) denotes an estimate of () and ( ) = () ( ). The
gain matrix K
4
ei
= K
`
4
ei
and the adaptation gain G
i
= G
`
i
are
positive denite.
We now enounce the main result for path-following control
problem in the theorem below which proof is given in the
Appendix.
Theorem 1: Given a sufciently smooth parameterised desired
path V
i
(s
i
) withits derivatives (withrespect tothe path parameter
s
i
[ R) bounded. Under Assumption 1, the non-linear system
described by the non-holonomic mobile robot (1) in closed
loop with the feedback controller and the adaptive update law
(24) together with the update law for s
i
is given as
s
i
= k
m
i
m
i
+ v
Li

3
k=1
6
ki
, i [ I (25)
renders the solutions of the closed-loop system (14), (16), (21)
and (22) bounded. Moreover, as t 1, the position, the
transformed heading error and the speed error [x
i
2x
di
,
y
i
2y
di
]
T
, c
ei
and | s
i
v
Li
|, respectively, converge
asymptotically to the origin.
Remark 5: Note that at steady state (i.e. when x
ei
0 and
y
ei
0 as t 1), the speed dynamic v
Li
(t) will approach
a desired speed v
d0
(t) imposed by the designer and
consequently the linear velocity of the mobile robot v
i
can
be adjusted along the path by adjusting v
d0
(t).
Remark 6: Note that the dynamic in (4) is free from
disturbances namely from uncorrected signal measurements,
high signal frequency noises, friction and the long-term drift,
which is not the case in real applications. Robust controller
should compensate for such disturbances. For practical
implementation, we avoided to include an adaptive approach
for disturbance compensation in Theorem 1. Compared to
some existing controllers in the literature (e.g. [27]) and the
references therein, the robustness of our controller stems
from the inclusion of integral actions in the design of the
path-following controller. The statement will be clear later in
the simulations to show the role of those integral actions to
maintain the stability of the path-following error dynamics.
3.3 Coordinated path-following control design
So far, the design of the update law s
i
has been done to solely
ensure the convergence of a single mobile robot to its path so
that it moves on it with a desired speed velocity. This design
must be modied so as to address simultaneously the
coordination and the path-following problem, to this effect
we select multi-level update law concept for s
i
as follows
s
i
= f
m
i
(.) + v
di
, f
m
i
(.) = k
m
i
m
i
+ v
Li

3
k=1
6
ki
(26)
As it can be seen from the design (26) the update law is
partitioned into two parts, namely local controller to ensure
path following, which is the term f
m
i
(.), the signal v
di
is an
interaction term to represent the connectivity of the
t
i
= B
1
i
K
4
ei
4
ei
F
i

Q
i
+
k
2i
y
ei
x
ei
V
0i
d
3
1i
v
2
Li
c
ei
.........
1 +c
2
ei
_
x
ei
d
1i
1
k
2i
V
0i
x
ei
v
Li
d
3
1i
_ _
1
c
ei
.........
1 +c
2
ei
_
(24)
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members and thus it plays the role of a global update
controller in the decentralised approach and will be used to
achieve robust synchronisation of the mobile robots along
their paths. At the path-following level, this signal can be
viewed as an external perturbation as it can be clearly
shown in the following proposition.
Proposition 1: The dynamics of the non-holonomic mobile
robot in closed loop with the control design t
i
and the
update law

Q
i
together with (26), viewed as a system with
states X
m
i
ei
= (x
ei
, y
ei
, c
ei
, 4
ei
, m
i
)
T
, and input v
di
, is ISS.
To account for the communication constraints, we denote
by N
i
# {1 . . . n}\{i} the set of neighbourhood vehicles j
that communicate with vehicle i. To model the exchange
state information that denes the neighbouring relation
between two vehicles, we make use of graph theory [24] to
represent the underlying communication network topology
of the vehicles in formation. Exploiting the results
previously presented for path following, we now propose to
design the coordination feedback law v
di
using a
combination of the backstepping technique and graph
theory. Let s
i
j
i
and s
i
= z
i
, we rewrite (24) in a state
space representation as follows
j
i
= z
i
,

z
i
= f
m
i
(.) + v
di
(27)
The coordination subsystem (27) appears in the form of a
double integrator with perturbation f
m
i
(.), the objective here
is to design v
di
such that |j
i
2j
j
| 0 and |z
i
2v
r
(t)| 0
as t 1 when perturbation f
m
i
(.) is absent. To solve the
coordination problem, we propose the following
coordinated controller for the ith mobile robot
v
di
= v
r
(t) k
1
(z
i
v
r
(t)) k
2
k
1
j[N
i
(j
i
j
j
)
k
2
j[N
i
(z
i
z
j
) (28)
where k
li
, l 1, 2 are positive constant gains. We are now
well poised to introduce the main theorem of the
coordination control problem whose proof is given in the
Appendix.
Theorem 2: Consider the coordination subsystem (27) with the
coordinated control law (28) and suppose that the graph G that
models the communication topology of the vehicles in
formation is connected for all time and possesses a globally
reachable node. Then, the subsystem (27) is ISS with respect
to f
m
(.) = [f
m
1
(.), . . . , f
m
n
(.)]
`
. In particular, we have that
lim
t1
sup|j
i
j
j
| lim
t1
supf
m
(.)
lim
t1
sup|z
i
v
r
(t)| (1 k
2
) lim
t1
supf
m
(.)
(29)
for all i, j [ {1, . . . , n}.
Remark 7: The cooperative control algorithm (28) developed
for a second-order-type dynamic encompasses the consensus
algorithm developed in [25] and extends to general digraph
possessing a spanning tree. Furthermore, our algorithm does
not need a centralised condition on the feedback gain that
usually depends on the knowledge of the graph structure of
the communication topology (i.e. the Laplacian graph) like
in [25] and thus elevates this restriction to a more realistic
and practical case. Here the controllers gains are simply
chosen to be positive regardless the underlying
communication topology among the robots.
Next, we consider the case where the measurement of the
transmitted/recieved coordinated states from vehicle i to
vehicle j or vice versa is quantised. In this paper, we study
a simplied model of quantised information exchange. In
particular, each mobile robot is assumed to have a
quantised measurement q(s
i
2s
j
) of the path parameter of
its neighbour robots j [ N
i
. The quantiser q(.) is a
piecewise constant function dened on R R. As in
[30], we assume that the quatiser q(.) is dened with
respect a given sensitivity D such that there exists real
number x . D . 0 and the following two conditions hold
|x| x, |q(x) x| D (30)
and
|x| .x, |q(x)| .x D (31)
The values x and D refer to quantisation range and the
quantisation error bound, respectively. The rst condition
provides a bound on the quantisation error, that is outside the
ball of radius x around the origin the quantiser saturates and
the quantised measurements are not anymore reliable. The
second condition gives a method how to detect quantisation
saturation. We seek a sufcient condition for robust
convergence of the coordinated states under logarithmic
quantised information (i.e. D d
l
|x|). In the case of
quantised information, the coordinated controller (28) rewrites
v
di
= v
r
(t) k
1
(z
i
v
r
(t)) k
2
k
1
j[N
i
q(j
i
j
j
)
k
2
j[N
i
q(z
i
z
j
) (32)
The following theorem will specialise to the case when
subsystem (27) is controlled by a quantised version of the
decentralised controller (28); see the Appendix for the proof.
Theorem 3: Consider the coordination subsystem (27) with
the quantised decentralised controller (32). Suppose that the
graph that models the communication topology among the
vehicles has a spanning tree for all time t 0. Then
selecting the logarithmic quantised gain d
l
(l
min
(M
T
M)/
M
T
M), where M designates the incidence matrix of the
graph, the coordination subsystem (27) is ISS with z as
state and f
m
as inputs, that is there exists functions
Table 1 Robot parameters simulations
r
i
0.04 m
b
i
0.1 m
a
i
0.02 m
m
c
i
2.3 kg
m
wi
0.28 kg
I
c
i
0.01 kg/m
2
I
wi
0.0056 kg/m
2
I
mi
0.002 kg/m
2
v
i
[ [0, 1.12] m/s
v
i
[ [25.74, 5.74] rad/s
www.ietdl.org
g
F
[ K and b
F
[ KL such that, for all t
0
0
|z(t)| b
F
(z(t
0
), t t
0
) +g
F
(f
m
1
) (33)
3.4 Stability of the path following and coordination
control inter-connection by small-gain theorem
Close inspection of the closed-loop system made of (1), the
path-following controller (24) and the coordinated control
law (32) form a feedback interconnected subsystems with
X
m
i
ei
and z as interacting signals. The following theorem
states the main result of this section.
Theorem 4: Consider the closed-loop system consisting of
the dynamic equation (1), the path-following controller
(24) and the quantised coordinated control law (32).
Then, for bounded initial conditions, all signals in the
Fig. 2 Snapshot of the formation manoeuvre along three paths without integral actions
a Desired and actual vehicle trajectories
b Path following errors x
ei
c Path following errors y
ei
d Heading errors c
ei
www.ietdl.org
closed-loop system remain bounded, and the coordination
s
i
2s
j
, i =j, the path-following states (x
ei
, y
ei
, c
ei
) and
the speed error | s
i
v
Li
| converge to neighbourhood
around zero.
Proof: From Proposition 1 and Theorem 3, the ISS propriety
has been established for the path-following problem and the
coordinated subsystem (27), respectively. Thus using the
notation used in [31], we have
X
m
i
ei
(.)
1
max{b(X
m
i
ei
(t
0
)), g( v
di
(z(t))
1
)} (34)
z(.)
1
max{b
F
(z(t
0
)), g
F
(f
m
(X
m
i
ei
)
1
)} (35)
Fig. 3 Snapshot of the formation manoeuvre along three paths with integral actions
a Desired and actual vehicle trajectories
b Path following errors x
ei
c Path following errors y
ei
d Heading errors c
ei
www.ietdl.org
According to the small-gain theorem [23], by checking the
following condition
g
F
(s) W g(s) , s (36)
we have
......
1
4a1
1
_
s
k
m
i
u
i
, s
To satisfy the relation (36), we select k
m
i
such that
k
m
i
.
1
u
i
......
4a1
1
_
Then, for bounded initial conditions X
m
i
ei
(t
0
) and z(t
0
), we
have
X
m
i
ei
(.)
1
max{b(X
m
i
ei
(t
0
)), gb
F
(z(t
0
))}
and
z(.)
1
max{b
F
(z(t
0
)), g
F
b(X
m
i
ei
(t
0
)), g
F
g( v
di
(z)
1
)}
This means that the overall interconnected systems formed by
the dynamic system (1) in closed loop with (24) and the
coordinated subsystem (32) is ISS. Consequently, the
boundedness of X
m
i
ei
and z is established, and therefore all
signals of the closed-loop system are bounded. This means
that (x
ei
, y
ei
, c
ei
), s
i
2s
j
, i =j and the speed error
| s
i
v
r
(t)| will converge to neighbourhood around zero.
This completes the proof. A
Fig. 4 Speed error prole and the coordination errors convergence with the quantisation scheme
a Time evolution of the speed errors
b Coordination errors
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4 Simulations
In this section we present simulation results to illustrate the
effectiveness of our decentralised coordinated controller on
three mobile robots. We Assume that the three robots are
identical, the nominal parameters of the mobile robot taken
from [17] are given in Table 1. The environment in which
the robots evolve is a rectangular eld 5 m 8 m. The
control and adaptive gain are chosen as
k
1i
= 2.5, k
2i
= 4, k
3i
= 40,
K
v
i
= diag([10, 15]), g
1i
= 10
g
2i
= 5, G
i
= diag([0.1, 0.1, 0.1, 0.1, 0.1, 0.1, 0.1, 0.1])
and the coordinated control gains are picked as
k
m
i
= 5, k
1
= 2.5 and k
2
15. The reference paths are
generated using polynomial interpolation. We simulate for
two cases of formation scenarios. In the rst case the
robots parameters are known and the onboard sensors used
for localisation are subject to noise disturbances. To
illustrate the effect of the integral action we run simulation
with and without integral actions. The initial conditions are
taken as [x
1
, y
1
, c
1
]
T
[22, 5, 0]
T
, [x
2
, y
2
, c
2
]
T
[22, 1, 0]
T
and [x
3
, y
3
, c
3
]
T
[0, 0, 0]
T
. The simulation results without
integral actions are reported in Fig. 2 whereas simulations with
integral actions are given in Fig. 3: The formation manoeuvre
along three paths, the path-following errors x
i
2x
di
, y
i
2y
di
and the heading error c
i
2c
di
are shown in Figs. 3a, b in
Figs. 3c and d, respectively. Clearly, the performances are poor
Fig. 5 Formation manoeuvre before and after adaptation
a Before adaptation
b After adaptation
www.ietdl.org
without the integral actions that contribute to compensate the
effect of the disturbances induced by the noise measurement.
Fig. 4 illustrates the time evolution of the error speed prole
s
i
v
r
(t) as well as the quantised coordination errors. Clearly,
the robots adjust their velocity to meet the formation
requirement and therefore the coordination errors j
i
2j
j
converge to neighbourhood around zero, which conrms the
statement of Theorem 4.
For the second case, we consider a formation of three
mobile robots moving along parallel sinusoidal paths such
that the vehicles maintain an inline formation pattern. In
this formation scheme, the robots parameters are assumed
to be unknown and have to be tuned during the formation
manoeuvre. Fig. 5 shows the reference and the real
trajectories for the robots before and after activating the
parameter updating. We consider the case when the
parameters updating is not active and when it is. Fig. 6
shows the time evolution of the distance error for the rst
robot in the formation, dened as the distance between the
robots position and the reference path (i.e. d =
.........
x
2
ei
+y
2
ei
_
).
Clearly from this gure, the tracking error achieves smaller
value in comparison with the case where the parameter
updating was not activated.
5 Conclusion
The paper addressed the problem of manoeuvring a group
of mobile robots along some given paths. In particular,
we have proposed a decentralised control strategy for path
following of a single (or a group) mobile robot with
integral action and adaptive controller. The coordination
scheme is executed while taking into account that the
relative information between neighbouring robots were
quantised. Numerical simulations were presented and
showed the good performance of the proposed controller
for coordinated path following with quantised information
exchange.
6 Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for
helpful comments on this paper.
7 References
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8 Appendix
Proof of Theorem 1: Consider the following positive denite
radially unbounded Lyapunov candidate
V
PF
i
=
..............
1 +x
2
ei
+y
2
ei
_
+
..........
(1 +c
2
ei
)
_
2 +0.5 4
T
ei
M
i
4
ei
+0.5

Q
`
G
1
i

Q+0.5
m[S
l[H
g
1
li
s
2
m
+0.5m
2
i
(37)
where S = {s
x
ei
, s
y
ei
, s
c
ei
}, H = {1, 2, 3}. Differentiating
(37) with respect to time along the solutions of (14), (16),
(21) and (24), using the additional control law (25), it is
easy to show with the help of the projection operators
properties that
V
PF
i
d
2
1i
(k
1i
x
2
ei
+k
2i
y
2
ei
) d
2
2i
k
3i
c
2
ei
4
T
ei
(D
i
+K
4
ei
)4
ei
k
m
i
m
2
i
(38)
From (38) it follows that
V
PF
i
W
i
0 (39)
where
W
i
= d
2
1i
(k
1i
x
2
ei
+k
2i
y
2
ei
) +d
2
2i
k
3i
c
2
ei
+4
T
ei
(D
i
+K
4
ei
)4
ei
+k
m
i
m
2
i
From the denition of V
PF
i
and (39) we conclude that V
PF
i
is
bounded and therefore (x
ei
, y
ei
, c
ei
, s
x
ei
, s
y
ei
, s
c
ei
,
m
i
) and (4
ei
,

Q) are bounded for all t t
0
0. We
integrate both sides of (39) from t
0
to t yields
_
t
t
0
W
i
(t) dt V
PF
i
(t
0
) V
PF
i
(t) V
PF
i
(t
0
) (40)
Clearly the right-hand side of (40) exists and is bounded.
Furthermore, it not difcult to show that |

W
i
| 1 and
therefore

V
PF
i
is uniformly continuous. Therefore by
Barbalats Lemma,

V
PF
i
0 and thus (x
ei
, y
ei
, c
ei
, m
i
) 0
and 4
ei
0 as t 1. Therefore the path following and
the speed velocity errors tracking are red uniformly
asymptotically stable while the adaptive parameter
estimation error is bounded. Furthermore, the uniform
asymptotic stability of the path-following errors and
the boundedness of adaptive parameter estimate ensure the
control input (24) is also bounded. For the clarity of the
presentation, we dene the vector X
m
i
ei
= (x
ei
, y
ei
,
c
ei
, 4
ei
, m
i
)
`
. From the denition of uniform asymptotic
stability, there exists a class KL function b(.,.) such that for
all initial states X
m
i
ei
(t
0
)
X
m
i
ei
(t) b(X
m
i
ei
(t
0
), t t
0
), t t
0
0
Proof of Proposition 1: Consider the candidate Lyapunov
function (37), its time derivative along the solutions of (14),
(16), (21) and (24), using the update law for s
i
(26) instead
of (25) results in
V
PF
i
W
i
+m
i
v
di
(41)
Select any u [ (0, 1) and write

V
PF
i
as
V
PF
i
W
i
k
m
i
u
i
m
2
i
+m
i
v
di
where
W
i
= d
2
1i
(k
1i
x
2
ei
+k
2i
y
2
ei
) +d
2
2i
k
3i
c
2
ei
+4
T
ei
(D
i
+K
4
ei
)4
ei
+k
m
i
(1 u
i
)m
2
i
The time derivative of V
PF
i
is then negative provided that
|m
i
| .
sup
ttt
0
| v
di
|
k
m
i
u
i
, u
i
[ (0, 1) (42)
it follows that there exists a class K function g(.) such that
X
m
i
ei
(t) b(X
m
i
ei
(t
0
), t t
0
) +g( sup
ttt
0
| v
di
|) (43)
Equation 43 implies that X
m
i
ei
is ISS with respect to | v
di
| as
input with gain (1/k
m
i
u
i
) that can be made small at will by
making the control gain k
m
i
sufciently large.
www.ietdl.org
Proof of Proposition 2: The global coordinated subsystem
(27) in vector form rewrites
j = z
z = f
m
(.) + v
d
(44)
where j = [j
i
]
n1
, z = [z
i
]
n1
, f
m
(.) = [f
m
i
(.)]
n1
and v
d
=
[ v
di
]
n1
. We propose to apply the backstepping technique to
(44) to achieve the form of the decentralised feedback given
in (28). We start by dening the neighbourhood
synchronisation error as follows
e = Lj (45)
where L stands for the Laplacian of a graph G that models the
communication network topology of the robots in formation. It
is well known from [24] that L 0, L MM
T
where M is the
incidence matrix, and L1
n
0, and that the smallest
eigenvalues l
i
of L is strictly positive. It was shown in [32]
that for a graph having a spanning tree the Laplacian matrix
L is irreducible, then is non-singular M-matrix and therefore
there exists P . 0 and a positive denite matrix Q
1
such that
PL +L
T
P Q
1
. Consider the following Lyapunov function
V
co1
=
1
2
e
`
Pe
whose time derivative along the solutions of (44) gives
V
co1
=
1
2
z
`
L
`
Pe +
1
2
e
`
PLz
at this step we can regard z as an immediate controller to make
V
co1
negative, since z is not the nal control input to be
designed, we introduce the error variable z z 2z
, where
we choose z
as follows
z
= k
2
e +v
r
(t)1
n
(46)
the time derivative of the lyapunov function V
co1
rewrites
V
co1
=
k
2
2
e
T
Q
1
e +e
`
PLz
Now, consider the following augmented Lyapunov function
V
co2
= V
co1
+
1
2
z
`
z
Taking the time derivative of V
co2
along the trajectories of (44)
results in
V
co2

k
2
2
l
min
(Q
1
)e
2
+e
`
PLz +z
`
(f
m
(.) + v
d
+k
2
e v
r
(t)1
n
)
Selecting the decentralised feedback law
v
d
= k
1
z + v
r
(t)1
n
k
2
e
which in component form is given in (28). Applying Youngs
inequality yields the following
V
co2

k
2
2
l
min
(Q
1
)e
2
+e
`
PLz k
1
z
`
z +z
`
f
m
(.)

k
2
2
l
min
(Q
1
)
l
max
(Q
2
)
41
1
_ _
e
2
(k
1
21
1
)z
`
z +
1
41
1
f
m
(.)
2
where Q
2
PLL
T
P is a positive semi-denite matrix whose
rank is n 21 and possesses an eigenvector 1
n
with simple
eigenvalue 0, l
max
and l
min
denote the largest and the
lowest eigenvalue of matrices Q
2
and Q
1
, respectively. 1
1
is
an arbitrary positive constant chosen such as
l
max
(Q
2
)
2k
2
l
min
(Q
1
)
1
1

k
1
2
Denote by
K
min
= min
k
2
2
l
min
(Q
1
)
l
max
(Q
2
)
41
1
_ _
, (k
1
21
1
)
_ _
and y = [e
`
, z
`
]
`
the derivative of V
co2
rewrites
V
co2
K
min
y
2
+
1
41
1
f
m
(.)
2
, 0,
y .
.........
1
4K
min
1
1
_
f
m
(.)
Consequently, the decentralised feedback (28) renders the
closed-loop system ISS from f
m
(.) to y with gain
.............
(1/4K
min
1
1
)
_
. Note that when the perturbation term f
m
(.) is
zero then it is straightforward to conclude that |j
i
2j
j
| 0
and |z
i
2v
r
(t)| 0 as t 1
V
co2
k
2
l
min
(M
`
M) d
l
M
`
M
1
41
1
_ _
j
2
(k
1
21
1
)z
2
+
1
41
1
f
m
2
aV
co2
+
1
41
1
f
m
2
(47)
where
a =min 2k
2
l
min
(M
`
M) d
l
M
`
M
1
41
1
_ _
, 2(k
1
21
1
)
_ _
1
1
is an arbitrary positive constant selected such that
1
1
,
1
4(l
min
(M
`
M) d
l
M
`
M)
and k
1
. 21
1
This shows that the control law (32) renders the closed-loop
ISS from f
m
to z with gain
..........
(1/4a1
1
)
_
.
Proof of Theorem 3: The proof follows the same steps of the
backstepping procedure previously presented in the proof of
Theorem 2 with slight modication. The virtual control (46) is
now dened to take into account the quantised information as
follows: z
= k
2
Mq(
j) +v
r
(t)1
n
where

j = M
`
j. Consider
the Lyapunov function V
co1
= (1/2)
j
`
j whose time
derivative encompasses new term expressing the error
www.ietdl.org
quantised state q
e
(
j) = q(
j)

j
V
co1
= k
2
j
`
M
`
M
j k
2
j
`
M
`
Mq
e
(
j)
k
2
l
min
(M
`
M)
j
M
`
M
l
min
(M
`
M)
D
_ _
k
2
(l
min
(M
`
M) d
l
M
`
M)
j
2
(48)
Clearly if we select
d
l

l
min
(M
`
M)
M
`
M
the solutions

j exponentially converge to zero with
convergence rate l
min
(M
T
M) 2d
l
M
T
M, consequently for
all i =j we have j
i
2j
j
0 as t 1. By construction if
z
were the real decentralised controller, then we would

have the convergence of

j
i
to v
r
(t). Following the
backstepping procedure, we dene as before z z 2z
and
the Lyapunov function V
co2
Vco
1
+(1/2)z
T
z whose
derivative along the solutions of (28) with the choice of the
decentralised controller given in (32) results in the
inequality given by (47).
This shows that the control law (32) renders the closed-
loop ISS from f
m
to z, which completes the proof. A
www.ietdl.org
Nonlinear coordination control for a group of mobile robots using a virtual structure
Hasan Mehrjerdi
a,
, Jawhar Ghommam
b
, Maarouf Saad
a
a
Department of Electrical Engineering, cole de technologie suprieure, Quebec University, Montreal, Canada
b
Research Unit on Mechatronics and Autonoumous Systems, cole Nationale dIngenieurs de Sfax, Tunisia
Article history:
Received 7 September 2010
Accepted 11 June 2011
Available online 12 August 2011
Keywords:
Coordination
Mobile robots
Nonlinear control
Virtual structure
a b s t r a c t
This paper considers the problem of creating a coordination algorithm for a team of mobile robots. The
goal for coordinating a group of mobile robots is to create an efcient architecture and control algorithm
that enables them to work both individually and in meaningful robot formations. This is achieved by
employing coordination and trajectory following techniques, and the knowledge derived by the localiza-
tion of the robots from their environments.
The model use a combination of the Lyapunov technique and graph theory embedded in the virtual
structure. In this way, the knowledge derived by the localization of the robots in the group allows for
efcient coordination and trajectory following, which can then create useful robot formations.
The results obtained from experiments, using three mobile robots in differing formations, show the
performance of the controller and the coordination algorithm. They also demonstrate the ability of the
algorithm to recover from position sensor measurement errors and temporary delays or failures in the
communication, which may cause the robots to momentarily abandon their place in the group formation.
2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
The various ways to control and coordinate a team of mobile ro-
bots have been studied over recent years. When comparing the
mission outcome of a group of multi-mobile robots (MMR) to that
of a single robot, it is easy to see that the overall performance of the
MMR group can improve task allocation, performance, time dura-
tion required and the system effectiveness to achieve the outcome
[36]. Instead of building a powerful single robot, a MMR group
provides the exibility in performing the task required, as well as
making the system more tolerant to possible individual robot
faults. MMRs have a variety of applications including grounded
mobile robots [13,14], underwater autonomous vehicles [15,16],
aerial vehicles [1719] and a eet of marines [20,21]. For a MMR
group where individual robots communicate with each other via
inbuilt sensors, there can be issues with sensor crosstalk [6,7]. In
practice, there is a limited communication range that restricts
the abilities of the robots to talk with each other. Some research
work has been done using variable phase communication to
minimize these errors [2527].
In this paper, we consider the problem of controlling a team of
mobile robots which have inbuilt sensors to move along desig-
nated trajectories in a group formation to reach desired target
points. By attaching wheeled encoder sensors to a group of mobile
robots, information about the local environment can be input and
interpolated to create the trajectory following and coordination by
the group. The strategies that have been developed to control and
coordinate the MMR group are an important consideration when
creating the control architecture to compliment the sensor
network. These include whether to have a centralized or decentral-
ized system, and what behaviors the robots must exhibit to com-
plete their tasks.
Theoretical views of MMR behavior are divided between
centralized and decentralized systems. In a centralized system, a
powerful core unit makes decisions and communicates with the
robots in the team. This core unit can optimize robot coordination,
accommodate individual robots faults and monitor the accom-
plishment of the mission. However, it is possible that any faults
in the core can facilitate a failure of the whole system.
In the decentralized approach, each robot can communicate and
share information, but can only achieve part of the global mission
by being given specic task allocations. Decentralized systems
optimize the allocation of resources and robot faults can also be
overlooked by this system, but can result in a less efcient mission
outcome. This allocation of resources in the decentralized ap-
proach is considered the most efcient way to process the
algorithm required to control the robots behavior.
Different architectures and strategies have been developed in
order to control and coordinate a MMR group. These include:
behavior based [2,11,12], virtual structure [9,10,28] and leader
0957-4158/$ - see front matter 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.mechatronics.2011.06.006
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: hasan.mehrjerdi.1@ens.etsmtl.ca (H. Mehrjerdi).
Mechatronics 21 (2011) 11471155
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Mechatronics
j our nal homepage: www. el sevi er. com/ l ocat e/ mechat r oni cs
follower robots [8]. However, there are differences in the control
and implementation phases of these strategies [2224,3033,35].
In the behavior based method, several desired behaviors are
considered for each robot, but a desirable group behavior is gener-
ated without an explicit model of the subsystems or the environ-
ment. This method is mathematically difcult to analyze
therefore making it hard to guarantee a precise formation control.
In the leader follower method, one of the robots is designated as
the leader, while the rest robots are considered to be followers.
The follower robots need to maintain a desired position relative
to the leader. This method is simple and reliable, but the lack of
explicit feedback from the followers to the leader is its inherent
disadvantage. The virtual structure approach for a MMR group
has the advantage of employing relatively uncomplicated behavior
coordination. However, as this structure treats the entire formation
as a single virtual rigid structure, it can result in a common point of
failure for the whole system.
The solution adopted in this paper builds upon the methods
presented in [1] where the authors considered trajectory following
for only a single robot using Lyapunov technique. The main contri-
bution of this paper is combining Lyapunov technique with graph
theory, and using these inside a virtual structure. This combination
efciently denes the formation controller for the kinematic model
of mobile robots. By doing so, this creates an elegant way of using a
single system to convert the formation control problem into a
stabilization problem, and bypasses the problem of constrained
motion control involving multiple systems. To achieve this out-
come, the issues related to the trajectory following control needed
to be individually solved for each mobile robot by allowing them
access to local measurements of the environment. By introducing
the concept of a virtual target that moves progressively along a
desired trajectory, new control law have been designed and imple-
mented to drive these mobile robots. By exchanging information,
the robots use these control law to track the moving virtual target
while simultaneously adjusting their speed proles on their indi-
vidual trajectories. The direction angle that each robot moves is
determined not in isolation, but by the desired trajectories and
formations of all the robots.
A two level architecture control based on nonlinear and PID
controllers has been developed so that the mobile robots move
in predened trajectories in a coordinated formation. A low level
PID controller adjusts the speed of the left and right front wheel
motors, and a high level controller coordinates the speed and
movement of the robot group by using a feedback controller
employing the Lyapunov function. Experimental tests are per-
formed in a laboratory environment in different robot formations
to show the ability and efciency of our controller and coordina-
tion algorithm. If there is a temporary loss of coordination due to
short communication failures, or sensor noise on the position
measurement, then the robots can lose group formation and divert
from their designated trajectories. The results show how the
coordination algorithm allows for this temporary loss of coordina-
tion, and so once the communication signal is restored the coordi-
nation resumes and the robots continue with the group formation
on their predened trajectories. In this paper, the controller and
trajectory planning are implemented on multiple homogeneous
mobile robots called EtsRo. These robots have four wheels in which
the two front wheels are dc-motor powered. Communication
between the core and the robots employs Zigbee technology
employing an application programming interface mode (API).
The paper is organized as follows: In Section 2, we present the
kinematics modeling of mobile robot. Section 3 describes the
Lyapunov function based control and the coordination algorithm.
Section 4 demonstrates the experimental results. Finally, we con-
clude the paper in Section 5.
2. Modeling of mobile robot
Fig. 1 shows the general model of a unicycle type mobile robot
as follows:
Kinematic equation of this robot can be explained as:
_ x
i
v
i
cosw
i
_ y
i
v
i
sinw
i
_
w
i
x
i
8
>
<
>
:
1
where p
i
= [x
i
, y
i
, w
i
]
T
denotes the position and orientation vector of
the ith robot of the group, v
i
and x
i
are linear and angular velocities
respectively. The system is subject to nonholonomic constraints
such as:
_ x
i
sinw
i
_ y
i
cosw
i
0 2
3. The Lyapunov control and coordination algorithm
Fig. 2 illustrates the block diagram used to control and coordi-
nate a group of mobile robots. There are two levels of the control-
ler, being low and high respectively. The low level controller is
designed and implemented to adjust the right and left wheel veloc-
ities, whereas the higher level controller, which is a nonlinear
controller, is designed to follow a generated trajectory and coordi-
nate the robots. Posture sensors are used to localize the robots, and
a coordination algorithm uses this information to direct the robots
group along trajectories in a desired formation.
To solve the problem of driving a robot along a desired trajec-
tory within a coordinated group formation, the key idea to be
exploited is to make the robot approach a target that moves along
the trajectory with a desired timing law. For our purposes, we con-
sider a eet of n P2 mobile robots. To obtain coordination
between robots, each trajectory is parameterized in term of
parameter s
i
. Robots keep coordination if s
i
= s
j
for all i, j. This
parameter is dened as s
i

1
i
L
i
, where 1
i
is signed curvilinear abscis-
sa and L
i
is the length of trajectories. For i = 1, 2, . . . , n we let p
i
(t) =
[x
i
, y
i
, w
i
]
T
and p
di
(s
i
) = [x
di
, y
di
, w
di
]
T
denote the position of robot i
and its assigned (desired) trajectory parameterized in terms of a
generalized variable s
i
2 R. We further let v
di
s
i
; x
di
s
i
2 R denote
the desired linear and angular velocities assignment for robot i. We
decompose the motion-control problem into two loops. The rst
loop is an inner-loop kinematic task, which consists of making
the robots velocity u
i
= [v
i
, x
i
]
T
track a desired velocity reference
u
di
= [v
di
, x
di
]
T
, where v
di
and x
di
are given in terms of the general-
ized variable s
i
time derivative as [28]:
Fig. 1. Unicycle type mobile robot.
1148 H. Mehrjerdi et al. / Mechatronics 21 (2011) 11471155
v
di

x
0
di
s
i
2
y
0
di
s
i
2
q
_ s
i
v
di
_ s
i
3
x
di

x
0
di
s
i
y
00
di
s
i
x
00
di
s
i
y
0
di
s
i
x
0
di
s
i
2
y
0
di
s
i
2
_ s
i

x
di
_ s
i
4
where x
di
, y
di
denote the desired position for robot i. The second
loop is an outer-loop dynamic task, which assigns the reference
velocity to the robots so as to achieve a convergence to the trajec-
tory. The trajectory following problem is stated as follows:
3.1. Trajectory following problem
Consider a mobile robot where its motion is described by the
kinematic in (1) and let p
di
(s
i
) be a desired trajectory parameterized
by a continuous variable s
i
t 2 R and v
di
s
i
2 R a desired temporal
velocity assignment. Derive a control law for u
di
and an update for
_ s
i
such that the position error kp
i
(t) p
di
(s
i
)k and the velocity error
kv
i
v
di
k converge to zero.
3.2. Coordination problem
Now consider a group of mobile robots each with a local con-
troller for trajectory following. To achieve coordination between
the elements of the group, a common velocity prole v
L
has to be
assigned to all the trajectories, so that the robots move along their
trajectories while holding a desired inter-robot formation pattern.
The update for s
i
can be seen as a coordination state such that coor-
dination exists between two mobile robots i and j if and only if
s
i
(t) s
j
(t) = 0. The key idea in designing the coordination control-
ler is to introduce a control variable in form of a correction term
~ v
di
t added to the dened common velocity prole, to obtain ref-
erence velocities for individual robots that is:
v
di
t v
L
~ v
di
t 5
As the robots always move forward on desired trajectories, then
v
L
> 0. To solve the coordination problem, a path which is called
X
0
, is needed with path parameter of s
0
. We suppose that there is
a virtual leader with no dynamic equations that moves along this
path with a desired velocity _ s
0
v
L
. We want that all the robots
synchronize with this virtual leader, which means s
i
, i = 1, . . . , N
equal to s
0
. Therefore, a control law for the correction velocity ~ v
di
is derived such that for all i, j 2 I the coordination error lim
t?1
js
i
s
0
j ?0 and the formation velocity error lim
t!1
j_ s
i
v
L
j ! 0.
3.3. Trajectory following solution
The errors in posture with respect to a local frame of reference
of the robot, is given by [28]
x
ei
y
ei
w
ei
2
6
4
3
7
5
cosw
i
sinw
i
0
sinw
i
cosw
i
0
0 0 1
2
6
4
3
7
5
x
di
x
i
y
di
y
i
w
di
w
i
2
6
4
3
7
5 6
The time derivative of the posture errors, using the relations in (3),
(4) and taking into account the constraints _ x
di
sinw
di
_ y
di
cos w
di
and w
ei
= w
di
w
i
yields
_ x
ei
v
i
v
di
_ s
i
cosw
ei
y
ei
x
i
_ y
ei
v
di
_ s
i
sinw
ei
x
ei
x
i
_
w
ei
x
i

x
di
_ s
i
8
>
<
>
:
7
The velocity error is dened as
_
~s
i
where
_
~s
i
_ s
i
v
L
8
The error kinematics (7) rewrites by substituting v
di
and x
di
by their
expressions in (3), (4) as
_ x
ei
v
i
v
di
v
L
cosw
ei
y
ei
x
i

_
~s
i
l
1i
_ y
ei
v
di
v
L
sinw
ei
x
ei
x
i

_
~s
i
l
2i
_
w
ei
x
i

x
di
v
L

x
di
_
~s
i
8
>
>
<
>
>
:
9
where l
1i
v
di
cosw
ei
and l
2i
v
di
sinw
ei
.
From (9), the aim of a control law that executes the trajectory
following task is to make the posture errors converge to zero.
Therefore, we consider v
i
as a controller to stabilize the x
ei
dynamic
and is chosen in such a way that cancels out the nonlinear term
v
di
v
L
cos w
ei
. However, stabilizing the second equation of (9) is
more involved, we cannot directly use w
ei
as controller to cancels
out the coupling terms x
ei
x
i
and y
ei
x
i
. To resolve this, we use the
angular velocity to eliminate the effects of the crossing terms x
ei
x
i
and y
ei
x
i
and the undesired term x
di
v
L
K
wei
sinw
ei
. We dene
[1,28]:
v
i
K
xi
x
ei
v
di
v
L
cos w
ei
10
x
i

x
di
v
L
v
di
v
L
K
yi
y
ei
K
wei
sinw
ei
11
where K
xi
, K
yi
, K
wei
are the control gains and positive constants.
By substituting v
i
and x
i
in the errors of (9), we get
_ x
ei
_ y
ei
_
w
ei
2
6
4
3
7
5
K
xi
x
ei
y
ei
x
di
v
L
v
di
v
L
K
yi
y
ei
K
w
ei
sinw
ei

_
~s
i
l
1i
v
di
v
L
sinw
ei
x
ei
x
di
v
L
v
di
v
L
K
yi
y
ei
K
w
ei
sinw
ei

_
~s
i
l
2i
v
di
v
L
K
yi
y
ei
K
w
ei
sinw
ei
x
di
_
~s
i
2
6
6
4
3
7
7
5
12
Let the candidate Lyapunov function be dened as
V
i

1
2
x
2
ei
y
2
ei

1 cos w
ei
K
yi
13
Differentiating relation (13) along the solutions of (12), we get
_
V
i
K
xi
x
2
ei

K
w
ei
v
di
v
L
sin
2
w
ei
K
yi
x
ei
_
~s
i
l
1i
y
ei
_
~s
i
l
2i

x
di
_
~s
i
sinw
ei
K
yi
x
ei
y
ei

x
di
v
L
x
ei
v
di
v
L
K
yi
y
2
ei
K
w
ei
x
ei
y
ei
v
di
v
L
sinw
ei
y
ei
v
di
v
L
sinw
ei
y
ei
x
ei

x
di
v
L
v
di
v
L
K
yi
y
2
ei
x
ei
K
w
ei
v
di
v
L
x
ei
y
ei
sinw
ei
v
di
v
L
y
ei
sinw
ei
14
Fig. 2. Infrastructure of multi-robot coordination.
H. Mehrjerdi et al. / Mechatronics 21 (2011) 11471155 1149
Simplifying relation (14) gives
_
V
i
K
xi
x
2
ei

K
w
ei
K
yi
v
di
v
L
sin
2
w
ei
K
i
_
~s
i
15
where K
i
x
ei
l
1i
y
ei
l
2i

sinw
ei
K
yi
x
di
. If the robot moves along its
path with a desired velocity for instance v
L
, then
_
~s
i
0 and conse-
quently relation (15) can be rewritten as
_
V
i
K
xi
x
2
ei

K
w
ei
K
yi
v
di
v
L
sin
2
w
ei
16
Theorem. Assume that the path to be followed by mobile robot i is
regular with respect to the path parameter s
i
, the control inputs v
i
and
x
i
given by (10) and (11) asymptotically force the tracking errors (x
ei
,
y
ei
, w
ei
) to converge to zero in the absence of the speed error term e
si
.
As a result, the position tracking x
i
x
ei
, y
i
y
ei
and the orientation
error w
i
w
ei
asymptotically converge to zero.
Proof. Let X
i
(t) denotes the state vector (x
ei
, w
ei
). Clearly from (13),
V
i
> 0 and V
i
= 0 only ifX
i
= (0, 0)
T
and y
ei
= 0. Its derivative
_
V
i
6 0
for any initial condition of the state vector X
i
. Therefore, from the
fact that (12) is locally Lipschitz in X
i
and uniformly in time t,
and the fact that v
di
t is uniformly continuous in t on [t
0
, 1), it fol-
lows that the state vector (X
i
(t), y
ei
)
T
is bounded and consequently
its derivative is bounded. Therefore kV
i
(t)k < 1 which shows that
V
i
(t) is uniformly continuous. Using the fact that V
i
(t) does not
increase with time and converges to some bounded value allows
to use Barbarals Lemma to conclude that lim
t!1
_
V
i
0, or other-
wise K
xi
x
2
ei

K
w
ei
K
yi
v
di
v
L
sin
2
w
ei
0 and this implies that x
ei
= 0 and
w
ei
= 0.
By using the rst equation of (12), it is straightforward to
conclude that lim
t?1
y
ei
= 0. This completes the proof for path
following. h
3.4. Coordination solution
To deal with the coordination problem, the strategy for trajec-
tory following developed above must be modied. Graph theory
can be useful to overcome the coordination difculty [36]. For this
reason, the information exchange between robots can be modeled
by graphs G. There are two kinds of graphs which can help the
coordination problem; directed and undirected graphs. A directed
graph (digraph) consists of a pairs (N, e), where N is a nite non-
empty set of nodes and e 2 N N denotes a set of ordered pairs
of nodes, called edges. An edge (i, j) in a digraph denotes that robot
j can obtain information from robot i, but not necessarily vice
versa. In contrast, the pairs of nodes in an undirected graph are
unordered, where an edge (i, j) denotes that robots i and j can
obtain information from each other. The following Lemma will
be used to solve the coordination problem.
Lemma 1. [29] Let D and A be the degree matrix and the adjacency
matrix of an undirected graph G, respectively. For an undirected graph,
L is called the Laplacian matrix, which is a symmetric positive and
semi-denite.
L l
ij
2 R
nn
D A 17
And matrix L is the weights between robot i and j and satises the
following conditions:
l
ij
6 0; i j
P
n
j1
l
ij
0; i 1; . . . ; n
8
>
<
>
:
18
Assumption 1. We assume that G is a connected and undirected
graph, i.e. a trajectory exists between every two distinct nodes of n.
The coordination problem is solved as follows:
Considering the real situation, where
_
~s
i
is not zero. We need to
nd a coordinating controller that assures the synchronization of
the path parameters with the virtual path parameter s
0
. Let the
coordinating controller be dened like [37]
_ s
i
v
L
k
X
ij
l
ij
s
i
s
j
b
i
s
i
s
0
" #
g
i
19
_ g
i
ck
X
ij
l
ij
s
i
s
j
b
i
s
i
s
0
" #
20
where b
i
denotes the non-zero connection between robot i with the
center of the virtual structure. We suppose that the center of the
virtual structure moves along the desired path X
0
with an assigned
dynamic _ s
0
v
L
. Dene ~s s
1
; s
2
; . . . ; s
n
T
s
0
1 and g = [g
1
, g
2
, . . . ,
g
n
]
T
. Eqs. (19) and (20) in vector form can be written as
_ s v
L
1 kL Bs kBs
0
1 g 21
_ g ckL Bs ckBs
0
1 22
where 1 = [1]
n1
and B is the diagonal matrix whose i
th
diagonal ele-
ment is b
i
. Using the fact that L1 = 0, Eqs. (21) and (22) can be writ-
ten in linear matrix form as:
_
~s
_ g
!

kL B I
cL B 0

~s
g

23
Theorem. Assume that the graph that captures the communication
topology between the n mobile robots is connected, then there exists
constants k and c such that the coordinated controller (19) and (20)
yields the exponential convergence of lim
t!1
js
i
s
0
j ! 0;
lim
t!1
j_ s
i
v
L
j ! 0.
Proof. To show that the state x ~s; g
T
of the linear system (23)
exponentially stable, a Lyapunov function V = x
T
Px for this system
is constructed where the matrix P is a positive denite matrix
and can be chosen as in [37] as follows:
P
I cI
cI I

24
The time derivative of the Lyapunov function V along the solutions
of (21) and (22) is
_
V x
T
2k1 c
2
H I
I 2cI
!
x 25
where H = L + B. By Lemma 3 of [37], the matrix L + B is positive def-
inite as we assume that the graph that capture the communication
topology is connected, then for the matrix Q to be positive denite
we select k >
1
4c1c
2
kmax
with k
max
is the maximum eigenvalue of H.
It follows, that there is a constant b such that
_
Vx 6 2bVx or
equivalently Vx 6 Vx0e
2btt
0
which implies that xt 6 ax

t
0
e
btt
0
and nally lim

t?1
js
i
s
0
j ?0 and lim
t!1
j_ s
i
v
L
j
! 0. h
3.4.1. Interconnection of the path following subsystem and the
coordination subsystem
Now the objectives that we originally dened are satised, if we
consider that the path following and the coordination are two
separated subsystems that have to be dealt independently. How-
ever this is not the case, as it can be seen in Eqs. (12) and (15).
We can regard Eq. (12) as a nonlinear system that can be written as
_
n
i
f n
i
gn
i
;
_
~s
i
26
with the features that the nominal system
_
n
i
f n
i
and its solu-
tions are asymptotically stable and the perturbing term gn
i
;
_
~s
i
lin-
early dependent of
_
~s
i
which exponentially vanishes to zero. We will
need a lemma to prove that the overall system converges to zero as
time goes to innity.
Lemma. Suppose that there exists a Lyapunov function for the
nominal system
_
n
i
f n
i
, satisfying the following conditions
Condition 1: c
1
kn
i
k
2
6 V
i
6 c
2
kn
i
k
2
Condition 2:
@V
i
@n
i
6 c
3
kn
i
k
Condition 3:
@V
i
@n
i
f n
i
6 c
4
kn
i
k
2
and the perturbing term satises
the exponential growth condition
Condition 4: kgn
i
;
_
~s
i
k 6 c
5
kn
i
ke
btt
0
Then the solution n(t) asymptotically converges to zero as time

goes to innity.
Proof. The time derivative of V along the solutions of (25) satises
_
V
i

@V
i
@n
i
f n
i

@V
i
@n
i
gn
i
;
_
~s
i
6
c
4
c
2
V
i
c
5
c
3
c
1
V
i
e
btt
0
6
c
4
c
2
c
5
c
3
c
1
e
btt
0

V
i
27
Consider the differential equation:
_
d c
4
c
5
c
3
c
1
e
btt
0

d 28
Solution of (28) can be given as:
dt dt
0
e
c
4
tt
0
e
c
5
c
3
c
1b
1e
btt
0
29
Now apply the comparison lemma yields [34]
V
i
t 6 V
i
t
0
e
c
4
tt
0
e
c
5
c
3
c
1b
1e
btt
0
30
this implies that there exists a positive constants c
6
and c
7
such that
nt 6 c
6
nt
0
e
c
7
tt
0
31
which completes the proof. h
All we need to do is to verify conditions 14 to our Lyapunov
function given in Eq. (13) in the paper.
For condition 1, using the fact that j1 cosw
i
j 6 jw
i
j and the fact
that we restrict w
i
to vary in the range of
p
2
;
p
2

we can easily nd
that min 0:5;
1
k
yi
n o
kn
i
k
2
6 V
i
6 max 0:5;
1
k
yi
n o
kn
i
k
2
. For condition 2
we again use the property that jsinw
i
j 6 jw
i
j, then
@V
i
@n
i
6

2
1
k
2
yi
q
kn
i
k. Condition 3 is easily veried for c
4
max
1; K
xi
;
K
wi
K
yi
n o
. For condition 4, the termgn
i
;
_
~s
i
K
i
_
~s
i
, since
_
~s
i
is expo-
nentially convergent this implies that kgn
i
;
_
~s
i
k 6 max
v
di
;
x
di
K
yi
n o
kn
i
ke
btt
0
.
All conditions are satised, the result follows readily.
4. Experimental results
Fig. 3 shows the complete structural design of the control, tra-
jectory planning and coordination for the group of mobile robots
being used in the experimental tests. This block diagrams consist
of: Communication, low level Controller (PID controller), high level
controller (Non-linear-based Lyapunov controller) and measure-
ment sensor (Encoders).
If we assume robot 1 is allowed to communicate with robot 2
and 3 according to graph of Fig. 4, then we can nd Laplacian ma-
trix and incident matrix as follow,
L
2 1 1
1 1 0
1 0 1
2
6
4
3
7
5
To illustrate the performance of the proposed coordination and con-
trol scheme, some tests were done on different trajectories with
three mobile robots.
4.1. Experimental setup
The purpose of the experiments is to demonstrate the stability
and the performance characteristics inferred from the theoretical
Fig. 3. Control structural design for coordination.
Fig. 4. Robots communication topology.
development. Before presenting the experimental results, we
briey discuss here the experimental set up, communication and
the design of the two level controllers. Fig. 5 depicts the EtsRo
mobile robots used for the experimental set up and the parameters
of this mobile robot are denoted in Table 1.
The experimental tests of our robot group are performed in a
laboratory using a at terrain with a work area of 4 7 m. By using
of the following equation, we obtain the linear and angular veloc-
ities of individual robots [36]:
v
v
R
t v
L
t
2
; x
v
R
t v
L
t
L
32
where v
R
(t) and v
L
(t) denote the right and left velocities and L shows
the distance between the two actuated wheels.
ZigBee modules were engineered to meet IEEE 802.15.4
standards and support the unique needs of low-cost, low-power
wireless sensor networks being used for the communication. The
modules operate within the 2.4 GHz frequency band. The range
for the module in the indoor environment is up to 100 m and RF
Data Rate is 250,000 bits/s. The PC communicates through a serial
port with a modem and with API mode with robots. The velocity of
ZigBee modem is set on 9600 bits/s.
API is used for serial-to-RF packetization. The frame-based API
extends the level to which a host application can interact with
the networking capabilities of the module.
The robots have two second-order lters designed to eliminate
sparks on the velocities. Two PID controllers are designed to reach
the best accuracy for the right and left motors as a low level
controller with a sampling time of T
s
= 10 ms designed in micro-
controller mounted on the robots. The high-level controller which
is a nonlinear controller designed in real-time simulink (Matlab)
with a sampling time of T
s
= 50 ms. Fig. 6 demonstrates the control
and coordination architecture for the mobile robots.
4.2. Experimental tests
In this section, we discuss the results of coordinated trajectory
following missions involving three EtsRo mobile robots. In the rst
test, circle trajectories which are concentric and have different ra-
dius are considered. In this scenario, robots are placed on a
common vertical line with the initial position of:
x
1
t
0
; y
1
t
0
; w
1
t
0
T
0; :5; 0
T
;
x
2
t
0
; y
2
t
0
; w
2
t
0
T
0; 1; 0
T
;
x
3
t
0
; y
3
t
0
; w
3
t
0
T
0; 1:5; 0
T
And nonlinear control gains are considered as: k
xi
= 1; k
yi
= 1;
k
wei
= 1.
Fig. 7 presents the reference and the actual robots trajectories in
this scenario. The trajectory tracking errors x
ei
and y
ei
are shown in
Fig. 8. These gures show that the robots travel along their individ-
ual trajectories with different velocities to arrive together at the
target point and the formation is therefore experimentally
successful.
The linear and angular velocities are plotted in Figs. 9 and 10
respectively. As can be seen in Fig. 9 the third robot moves faster
because of the biggest circumference trajectory while the rst
Fig. 5. EtsRos.
Table 1
EtsRo parameters.
Radius of wheels 4.5 cm
Length 23 cm
Width 20 cm
Height 11 cm
Weight 2.3 kg
Maximum linear velocity of robot 1.12 m/s
Maximum angular velocity of robot 5.74 rad/s
DC motors voltages 7.5 V
Maximum speed (DC motors) 175 rpm
Resolution of the incremental encoders 6000 Pulses/Turn
Fig. 6. Control architecture of EtsRo.
-2 -1 0 1 2
-2
-1.5
-1
-0.5
0
0.5
1
1.5
2
x(m)
y
(
m
)
Robot3
Robot2
Robot1
Direction
Fig. 7. References trajectories and real robots trajectories.
robot has the slowest velocity due to the smallest circumference
trajectory. The robots will adjust their speed along their individual
trajectories to achieve an overall group coordination. Fig. 11 repre-
sents a coordination state error. These errors go to zero, as is
expected by the theory explained in Section 3 for all robots.
In the second scenario, tests are devised to deliberately add
noise into the measuring position and the communication
system-for example delays or failures. In this test, the trajectories
have different lengths and the initial positions of the robots are:
x
1
t
0
; y
1
t
0
; w
1
t
0
T
0; 1; 0
T
;
x
2
t
0
; y
2
t
0
; w
2
t
0
T
0; 0; 0
T
;
x
3
t
0
; y
3
t
0
; w
3
t
0
T
0; 1; 0
T
In this scenario, a white noise with disturbance of ten percent is
intentionally added on the position measurement for robot 1, a
communication failure is implied for robot 2 and lastly for robot 3
we consider a communication delay. Fig. 12 shows the references
trajectories and the real trajectories of the robots and the results
of the errors that we impose upon the system. These errors are a
10 s communication failure for robot 2, a 10 s delay for robot 3
and a 30 s position measurement for robot 1. This gure shows that
regardless of these short time communication problems or noise on
position measurement, the robots still keep coordination and follow
the desired trajectories.
The trajectory tracking errors x
ei
and y
ei
are shown in Fig. 13. As
can be seen in Fig. 13a, when robot 2 has a failure in communication
there is a visible error on x
ei
and it loses its desired position. While
the communication resume, the coordination forces robot 2 to fol-
low its desired trajectory and the trajectory following error go to
zero.
The linear and angular velocities are plotted in Figs. 14 and 15
respectively. As can be seen in these gures, when there is a
communication failure, the linear and angular velocities of the
robot reduces to zero and the robot will stop moving. However,
when there is a communication delay, the robot will continue with
the same angular and linear velocities as it had before of this delay.
Therefore a communication failure will stop robot movement,
(a) x
ei
(b) y
ei
0 50 100 150 200
-0.1
-0.05
0
0.05
0.1
time (s)
X

e
i

(
m
)
Xei 1
Xei 3
Xei 2
0 50 100 150 200
-0.05
0
0.05
time (s)
y

e
i
(
m
)
yei2
yei1
yei3 Xei1
Xei2
Xei3
yei1
yei2
yei3
Fig. 8. Trajectory following errors.
0 50 100 150 200
-0.02
0
0.02
0.04
0.06
0.08
time (s)
v
(
m
/
s
)
v1
v2
v3
v1
v3
v2
Fig. 9. Linear velocity of robots.
0 50 100 150 200
-0.5
0
0.5
time (s)
w
3
(
r
a
d
/
s
)
0 50 100 150 200
-0.5
0
0.5
w
2
(
r
a
d
/
s
)
0 50 100 150 200
-0.5
0
0.5
w
1
(
r
a
d
/
s
)
Fig. 10. Angular velocity of robots.
0 50 100 150 200
-0.1
-0.05
0
0.05
0.1
Time (sec)
C
o
o
r
d
i
n
a
t
i
o
n

s
t
a
t
e

e
r
r
o
r
s1-s2
s1-s3
s2-s3 s2-s3
s1-s3
s1-s2
Fig. 11. Coordination state error s
i
s
j
, "i j.
-1 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
-2
-1
0
1
2
x(m)
y
(
m
)
Robot1
Robot2
Robot3
Fig. 12. References trajectories and real robots trajectories with position measure-
ment noise and the temporary communication failures or delays.
while a communication delay still allows the robot to continue
moving until it is restored. As well, these gures show that the
presence of noise on the position measurement of robot 1 also
creates noises on the linear and angular velocities of robot.
Fig. 16 depicts the coordination state error. This gure shows
that even with the existence of a temporary loss of coordination
(up to 15 s) due to short communication failures or delays, the
robots can still maintain their formation. The results indicate that
the coordination algorithm allows for this temporary loss of coor-
dination and that once the communication signal is restored, this
coordination is re-established and the robots continue with the
group formation on their predened trajectories.
However, if the loss of coordination is of signicant time dura-
tion (more than 15 s), then the robots lose group formation and
will divert from their designated trajectories. Fig. 17 shows this
example with an extended communication failure and delay for
robots 2 and 3 for 20 s.
Fig. 18 presents the coordination state error in this test. This
gure shows that with the existence of a temporary loss of coordi-
nation to 20 s due to short communication failures or delays, the
robots can start losing formation.
5. Conclusion
In this paper, a control algorithm and efcient coordination
architecture have been developed for a group of mobile robots
(a) x
ei
(b) y
ei
0 50 100 150 200
-0.1
0
0.1
0.2
0.3
0.4
time (s)
X

e
i
(
m
)
Xei1
Xei2
Xei3
Xei2
Xei1 Xei3
0 50 100 150 200
-0.1
-0.05
0
0.05
time (s)
y

e
i
(
m
)
yei1
yei2
yei3
yei3
yei2
yei1
Fig. 13. Trajectory following errors.
0 50 100 150 200
-0.5
0
0.5
1
w
2
(
r
a
d
/
s
)
0 50 100 150 200
-0.5
0
0.5
1
time (s)
w
3
(
r
a
d
/
s
)
0 50 100 150 200
-0.5
0
0.5
1
w
1
(
r
a
d
/
s
)
Communication
Delay
Communication
Failure
Noise on measurement
0 50 100 150 200
-0.04
-0.03
-0.02
-0.01
0
0.01
0.02
0.03
0.04
time (s)
C
o
o
r
d
i
n
a
t
i
o
n

s
t
a
t
e

e
r
r
o
r
Lose coordination because
of communication failure
of communication delay and noise
on measurement
i
s
j
, "i j.
0 50 100 150 200
0
0.1
0.2
v
1
(
m
/
s
)
0 50 100 150 200
0
0.1
0.2
v
2
(
m
/
s
)
0 50 100 150 200
0
0.1
0.2
time (s)
v
3
(
m
/
s
)
Communication
Delay
Communication
Failure
Noise on measurement
-1 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
-2
-1
0
1
2
x(m)
y
(
m
)
Robot1
Robot3
Robot2
Fig. 17. References trajectories and real robots trajectories with extended commu-
nication failures or delays.
0 50 100 150 200
-0.04
-0.03
-0.02
-0.01
0
0.01
0.02
0.03
0.04
time (s)
C
o
o
r
d
i
n
a
t
i
o
n

s
t
a
t
e

e
r
r
o
r
of communication failure
of communication delay and noise
on measurement
i
s
j
, "i j.
enabling them to work both individually and in meaningful robot
formations. The approach developed uses a combination of Lyapu-
nov technique with graph theory embedded within a virtual struc-
ture. A two level controller has been designed incorporating a low
level PID controller for the right and left motors, and a high level
controller to coordinate the speed and movement of the robot
group. The high level controller has been designed using a feedback
controller utilizing the Lyapunov function. The communication
was designed with Zigbee technologies enabling communication
with multiple mobile robots. The experimental results on a mul-
ti-robot platform show the effectiveness of the theoretical result
and the performance of the system against short term communica-
tion loss or failure, as well position measurement errors.
Acknowledgment
The authors thank Neil Burton for his collaboration on
modication.
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IEEE/ASME TRANSACTIONS ON MECHATRONICS, VOL. 16, NO. 5, OCTOBER 2011 907
Hierarchical Fuzzy Cooperative Control and Path
Following for a Team of Mobile Robots
Hasan Mehrjerdi, Student Member, IEEE, Maarouf Saad, Senior Member, IEEE, and Jawhar Ghommam
AbstractIn this paper, an intelligent cooperative control and
path-following algorithm is proposed and tested for a group of mo-
bile robots. The core of this algorithm uses a fuzzy model, which
mimics human thought to control the robots velocity, movement,
and group behavior. The designed fuzzy model employs two be-
haviors: path following and group cooperation. Hierarchical con-
trollers have also been developed based on fuzzy and proportional
integral derivative to instruct the robots to move in a group forma-
tion and follow specic paths. As the robots move along individual
predetermined paths, the designed algorithm adjusts their veloci-
ties so that the group arrives at their target points within the same
time duration regardless of the length of each individual path. The
fuzzy rules applied to the robots are dened by the kinematics lim-
itation, which is bounded by both linear and angular velocities and
the length and curvature of the individual paths. The experimental
results of three mobile robots traveling on different paths are pre-
sented to show the accuracy of obtaining control and cooperation
by using the fuzzy algorithm.
Index TermsCooperation, fuzzy control, path following, uni-
cycle wheeled mobile robots.
I. INTRODUCTION
M
ULTIROBOTS have been studied as having many pos-
sible applications from grounded mobile robots [15],
[16], to underwater autonomous vehicles [20], [21], aerial vehi-
cles [17][19], and eets of marines [22], [23]. There are many
advantages of deploying more than one robot to solve a task
and the motivation of using multimobile robots (MMR) is to
improve task allocation, performance, and time [6][9].
The ability to control a group of mobile robots has long been
an intriguing idea in robotics and articial intelligence. The
challenge has been to create a model that will exhibit coopera-
tive behavior amongst multiple robots to move along designated
paths and stay in a group formation. Although seemingly easy
for human beings, the concepts of real-time path following and
synchronized behavior are difcult tasks for robots. When for-
mulating how to make human thought processes a reality
Manuscript received February 4, 2010; revised April 21, 2010; accepted June
12, 2010. Date of publication July 23, 2010; date of current version August 30,
2011. Recommended by Technical Editor P. X. Liu.
H. Mehrjerdi and M. Saad are with the Department of Electrical Engineering,
Ecole de Technologie Sup erieure, Quebec University, Montreal, QC H2X 3X2,

Canada (e-mail: hasan.mehrjerdi.1@ens.etsmtl.ca; maarouf.saad@etsmtl.ca).
J. Ghommam was with the Research Unit on Intelligent Control and
Optimization of Complex Systems, Ecole Nationale dIng enieurs de Sfax
(ENIS), 3038 Sfax, Tunisia. He is now with the Institut Nationale des Sci-
ences Appliqu ees et de Technologies, 1080 Tunis Cedex, Tunisia (e-mail:
jghommam@gmail.com).
Digital Object Identier 10.1109/TMECH.2010.2054101
in multirobotic modeling, several key concepts are considered
necessary. The ability of a robot to track its path as well as
transmitting its location data will therefore allow a trajectory
to be planned between the robots initial starting point and its
target point. This model must also be able to control all the
robots within the group to reach their target points both individ-
ually and in formation. To achieve this processing for a MMR
group, it is necessary to have localized feedback sensors for each
robot in the group. There have been researches using differing
sensors and algorithms to localize a robot in its environment
[32][34].
In order to design an algorithm that synchronizes multiple
robot control, three common models were studied to evaluate
their application and effectiveness. They are: 1) the behavior-
based model [3], [5], [13]; 2) the leaderfollower method [11];
and 3) the virtual structure model [12], [30]. There are differ-
ences in the control section or the implementation phases [14],
[24][27], [35].
The behavior-based model employs several behaviors for
each robot, but there is lack of modeling for the subtasks (task
decomposition) or robot surroundings. This method is mathe-
matically difcult to analyze, and therefore, it is hard to guar-
antee a precise formation control.
In the leaderfollower method, we have one robot nom-
inated as the leader, while the other robots are nominated as
followers. This method is both simple and reliable as the fol-
lower robots have only two tasks, that is, to keep a certain
distance and relative position from the leader. However, there is
no explicit feedback from the followers to the leader and that is
the disadvantage of this method.
The virtual structure method treats the entire robot forma-
tion as a single virtual rigid structure. As the mobile robots
are behaving as a single entity, this model exhibits a relative
simplicity in the coordination of the whole group.
However, as this model treats the entire formation as a single
virtual rigid structure, it can also be a common point of failure
for the whole system.
Besides this, the authors considered this to be the best plat-
form due to its simplicity, and therefore, it was decided to keep
the virtual structure concept. However, it was considered that
this model could be improved by incorporating a control archi-
tecture that was more streamlined.
Earlier study that explored algorithms for use with coopera-
tive multiple robot control often used complex mathematical and
nonlinear methods, therefore, making them hard to implement.
The breakthrough came when it was decided to use fuzzy logic
to simplify the computations used by the algorithm controller.
Fuzzy logic mimics the way the human brain makes decisions
1083-4435/$26.00 2010 IEEE
908 IEEE/ASME TRANSACTIONS ON MECHATRONICS, VOL. 16, NO. 5, OCTOBER 2011
by grouping similar objects together, and therefore, creates fast
and accurate response times in the decision making process.
This has distinct advantages in MMR modeling, where multiple
robots are moving along designated paths and simultaneously
being directed with rapid velocity changes.
The model described in this paper uses a cooperative vir-
tual model upgraded with a fuzzy-logic controller. Articial-
intelligence approaches are well cited for path following of mo-
bile robot. Research evaluating both neural network approach
or fuzzy logic controllers has been developed for path follow-
ing in known and unknown environments [2], [4], [28],
[29]. There are some researches with combinations of neural
network and fuzzy, termed neurofuzzy applications [1], [10].
Though single robots have been the primary reference for much
of the research that employs articial intelligence, these meth-
ods can also be used to solve cooperative problems for multiple
robots. Cooperation between robots is an issue, where robots can
move on different paths with different lengths to shape special
formations.
It was decided that the virtual fuzzy model to be used would
consist of a two-level hierarchical structure in which fuzzy
logic is the prime controller, and therefore, performs the tasks
of path following, localization, and group cooperation. The sec-
ondary controller is a proportional integral derivative (PID) con-
troller that ensures that the motor velocity to the robots left and
right front wheels is always accurate. The direction angle of
each robot is determined by the desired paths and the forma-
tions of the MMRgroup. This cooperative method, derived from
the fuzzy logic and PID, empowers the robots to move, follow,
and coordinate their speed and direction on paths with differing
lengths.
Experimental tests are performed with robots in various for-
mations to verify the reliability of the fuzzy control and the co-
operative algorithm. The control and path planning in this paper
are implemented on multiple robots called ETsRo. These robots
have four wheels with the front two wheels being dc-powered.
The paper is organized as follows. In Section II, we present
model of unicycle-type mobile robot. Section III describes the
fuzzy-based control and the cooperation algorithm. Section IV
demonstrates the experimental results. Finally, we conclude pa-
per in Section V.
II. MODELING OF UNICYCLE-TYPE MOBILE ROBOT
Fig. 1 shows the general kinematic model of a unicycle-type
mobile robot and the discretized paths.
In Fig. 1, i = 1, . . . , k represents the number of individ-
ual mobile robots, P
i
= [x
i
, y
i
,
i
]
T
denotes the position and
orientation vector of the ith robot of the group.
Q
di(n)
= [x
di(n)
, y
di(n)
,
di(n)
]
T
represents the coordination
of nth sample point on the ith path where n = 0, . . . , f. The
path is described by a set of discrete node positions Q
di(0)
to
Q
di(f )
linked to each other starting from the initial position to
the nal desired position. Q
di(n)
is nth discretized sample on
the path. Kinematic equation of unicycle-type can be explained
Fig. 1. Kinematic model of unicycle-type mobile robot.
as [31]
x
i
(t) = v
i
(t) cos
i
(t)
y
i
(t) = v
i
(t) sin
i
(t)
i
(t) =
i
(t)
(1)
where v
i
and
i
are the linear and angular velocities of each
robot, respectively. The system is subject to nonholonomic con-
straints such as
x
i
(t) sin
i
(t) y
i
(t) cos
i
(t) = 0. (2)
Linear and angular velocities of mobile robots are subject to
the following bounds:
|v
i
(t)| v
i max
|
i
(t)|
i max
| v
i
(t)| v
i max
|
i
(t)|
i max
. (3)
In discrete time, (1) can be explained as follows:
x
i
(t
n+1
) = x
i
(t
n
) + Tv
i
(t
n
) cos
i
(t
n
)
y
i
(t
n+1
) = y
i
(t
n
) + Tv
i
(t
n
) sin
i
(t
n
)
i
(t
n+1
) =
i
(t
n
) + T
i
(t
n
)
(4)
where T is sampling time and t
n
express time in nth sample
point. Desired robot position and orientation in sample time t
n
can be dened as follows:
P
i
(t
n
) = [x
i
(t
n
), y
i
(t
n
),
i
(t
n
)]
T
. (5)
III. FUZZY CONTROL AND COOPERATIVE ALGORITHM
Fig. 2 illustrates the block diagram used to control and syn-
chronize a group of mobile robots. There are two hierarchical
levels of controller being low and high, respectively. The low-
level controller is designed to adjust each robots right- and
left-wheel velocities. The high-level controller, which is a fuzzy
controller, is designed to coordinate the robots group forma-
tion as well as following the generated paths. Posture sensors
are also used to localize the robots. A designed algorithm has
been used to localize and synchronize the robots into a group
formation and direct them to their desired paths.
MEHRJERDI et al.: HIERARCHICAL FUZZY COOPERATIVE CONTROL AND PATH FOLLOWING FOR A TEAM OF MOBILE ROBOTS 909
Fig. 2. Infrastructure of multirobot control and cooperation.
Fig. 3. Fuzzy-control structure.
Fig. 3 shows fuzzy system structure with desired inputs and
outputs.
Inputs of the fuzzy controller are d
RP(i)
,
i
, L
i
,
i
x
err(i)
, and
y
err(i)
, where d
RP(i)
is the distance from the actual position of
ith robot to the next desired position,
i
is the difference between
the line joining the current position to the next desired position
and the actual heading of the robot. L
i
is the length of paths
and
i
denotes the path parameter being used synchronize the
individual robot within the group formation. x
err(i)
, y
err(i)
, and
i
are calculated by the following equations in robot reference
as [31]:
x
err(i)
y
err(i)
cos
i
sin
i
0
sin
i
cos
i
0
0 0 1
x
di
x
i
y
di
y
i
di

i
. (6)
The output of the fuzzy controller determines the linear and
angular velocities of individual robots.
To solve the problem of propelling a robot along a continu-
ous desired path, the key idea is to analyze the path in discrete
segments and consider the robot moving between discontinuous
sampling points. The paths are modeled by a fth-order poly-
nomial and divided into segments for analysis with the same
sampling points numbers regardless of the shape, curvature, or
path length.
A. Path Following and the Cooperation Problem
The task of the fuzzy path-tracking controller is to command
the robots to followthe paths in a smooth and continuous manner
with the best possible precision. In order to achieve this, it is
Fig. 4. Robot is on the desired path.
Fig. 5. Robot is not on the desired path.
not necessary for the robots to pass exactly through specic
sampling points on their paths, but they must at least pass within
a proximity to them while reaching their nal destination. For
our purposes, path following is categorized in two different
groups.
1) The robot is placed on its predened path. In this scenario,
which is shown in Fig. 4, the robot tries to follow and stay
on its desired path.
2) In the second modeling, the robot is not placed on its
predened path. In this scenario, which is shown in Fig. 5,
the robot tries to move forward toward the path to reach
and follow its desired path.
We consider P
i
and Q
di
to represent the position of robot i and
desired path discretized. We let v
di
and
di
denote the desired
linear and angular velocities assignment for robot i. The purpose
of path following is to make the robots velocity u
i
= [v
i
,
i
]
T
track a desired velocity reference u
di
= [v
di
,
di
], which means
u
i
u
di
0 and also P
i
Q
di
0.
Now, consider a group of mobile robots each with a local
controller for path following. In order to have cooperation across
the whole robot group, they are required to move along their
paths while maintaining a desired interrobot formation pattern
as well as reaching their nal goals at the same time regardless
of their path lengths or their initial positions.
B. Fuzzy Path Following and Cooperative Controller
The form of the control-law equation for path following and
cooperation is as follows:
_
v
i
i
_
=
_
f
1
(d
RP(i)
,
i
, x
err(i)
, y
err(i)
, L
i
,
i
)
f
2
(d
RP(i)
,
i
, x
err(i)
, y
err(i)
, L
i
,
i
)
_
. (7)
The functions f
1
and f
2
are the control laws of a Sugeno-type
fuzzy controller. Sugeno controllers take in fuzzy inputs and
outputs. The task of the path-following program is to make the
robots pass in proximity of the sampling points in a continuous
and smooth manner. The behavior of the controller is such that if
the discrete points are close to each other then a higher precision
is achieved but with the robot moving at a lower speed due to
the high number of sampling points. If less precision is required,
Fig. 6. Membership function of d
RP(i)
.
Fig. 7. Membership function of
i
.
the discrete points can be selected further apart and the robot
will therefore move at higher speed.
The membership functions of inputs d
RP(i)
and
i
are shown
in Figs. 6 and 7.
Linear velocity obtained by fuzzy controller related to inputs
d
RP(i)
and
i
is shown in Fig. 8. As can be seen in this gure,
when the robot is far from the path, or the distance between the
actual position of robot and the next ahead sampling point is
large, then its linear velocity will be increased. When the robot
is close to the path, or the distance between actual position of
robot and the next ahead sampling point is small, the velocity
will be decreased and the robot will move slower.
The angular velocity obtained by the fuzzy controller related
to its inputs d
RP(i)
and
i
is shown in Fig. 9. As can be seen
in this gure, when the angle between the robot and the path is
large, the robot will have more angular velocity to decrease this
error.
The reason for using x
err(i)
as an input to the fuzzy system
in path following can be described as follows: if we suppose
that a robot should travel from Q
di(n)
to Q
di(n+1)
, this means
that it has to catch the targeting point Q
di(n+1)
. However, if
the robot passes points Q
di(n+1)
and then Q
di(n+2)
in the robot
reference, then when moving to the next step, the targeting point
Q
di(n+1)
falls behind the actual position of the robot, which
means (x
i
> x
di
x
err(i)
< 0).
Fig. 8. Linear velocity obtained by fuzzy controller.
Fig. 9. Angular velocity obtained by fuzzy controller.
Fig. 10. Robot passes targeting point ahead.
To solve this issue, we add the following rule to the fuzzy
controller.
1) If x
i
> x
di
, then robot will stop, until condition x
i
x
di
is fullled.
Fig. 10 depicts this issue. If robot is not on the path or the
vertical position of robot in xy coordination (y
i
) is different
fromthe next vertical sampling point on the path, then y
err(i)
will
be used as an extra input to the fuzzy controller. This input is
used to help the robot turn toward the paths and catch it. Fig. 11
shows the necessity of using the y
err(i)
as an input to the fuzzy
controller. If the robot is not on the path and there is an error
between the heading angle of the robot and the path, the robot
will turn to minimize this error. However, when this error is zero
Fig. 11. Robot is not on the same y-coordination as path.
Fig. 12. Membership function of y
err(i)
.
(
i
= 0), the robot will move to a path parallel to the actual path,
and therefore, will never reach it.
To solve this problem, an angle is added to
i
, which is
i
.
Using the y-coordination, the further the robots are from the
path, the larger this angle becomes, and will only reduce as the
robots move closer to the path. Once the robot catches the path,
i
will be nally zero.
if

y
err(i)
> 0
i
(new) =
i
+
i
. (8)
The membership functions of this input is shown in the Fig. 12
and Fig. 13 shows the change of
i
related to change of y
err(i)
.
To obtain a group cooperation between the robots, each path is
parameterized in terms of parameter
i
. The robots will keep in
cooperation, if
i
=
j
for all i, j. This parameter is dened as
i
= s
i
/L
i
, where s
i
is signed curvilinear abscissa of sampling
points Q
di(n)
along the path. For group cooperation, all paths
are discretized to the same number of sampling points. As the
robot group need to reach their destination at the same time, if
a path is longer, then the distance between the sampling points
will increase, thus forcing the individual robot to move faster in
order to complete the same number of sampling points within
the allocated time. However, if the path length is smaller, then
the distance between the sampling points will decrease and the
robot move slower with respect to the other robots in the group.
To improve the cooperation between the robots traveling in
formation, the following rules are applied when they are ahead
or behind of their desired path position:
1) If the robot is ahead of the desired path (x
err(i)
< 0), then
it will stop until the condition
i
=
j
is fullled for all
robots.
2) If the robot is behind of the desired path (x
err(i)
0), then
the robot will go faster to catch the path and other robots.
Fig. 13.
i
obtained by fuzzy controller and y
err(i)
.
Fig. 14. Linear velocity obtained by the fuzzy controller and inputs
d
RP(i)
, x
err(i)
.
Fig. 15. Angular velocity obtained by the fuzzy controller and inputs
, x
err(i)
.
Figs. 14 and 15 show the linear and angular velocities ob-
tained by the inputs d
RP(i)
, x
err(i)
. As can be seen in these
gures, if x
err(i)
< 0, then the linear and angular velocities will
be zero and the robot will stop.
TABLE I
RULE BASE FOR PATH FOLLOWING
Fig. 16. Intelligent owchart of path following and cooperation.
Rule bases for path following and cooperation are shown in
Table I, where the inputs 1, 2, and 3 are d
RP(i)
,
i
, and x
err(i)
,
and the outputs 1 and 2 are v
i
and
i
, respectively.
Block in Fig. 16 represents the path following and cooperation
ow chart algorithm.
C. Stability Proof of Path-Following Algorithm
Taking the derivative of (6) along the kinematics equation (1)
gives the following velocity error:
x
err(i)
= v
i
+ v
di
cos
i
+ y
err(i)

i
y
err(i)
= v
di
sin
i
x
err(i)

i

i
=

di

i
. (9)
The available controllers to steer the robot to its path are
v
i
and
i
. d
RP(i)
is dened as d
RP(i)
=
_
x
2
err(i)
+ y
2
err(i)
,
where the derivation of d
RP(i)
along (9) gives the following:
d
RP(i)
=
v
i
x
err(i)
d
RP(i)
+ v
di
cos(
i
+
i
) (10)
where
i
= tan
1
(y
err(i)
/x
err(i)
).
The state error can be written as
X
i
= f
i
(d
RP(i)
,
i
, x
err(i)
, y
err(i)
,
i
) where
i
= [v
i
,
i
].
The idea of the fuzzy controller is to linearize

X
i
about a
number of operating points depending on the linguistic rules
that are dened. First, we need to separate path following from
the group synchronization. Since in path following the robots are
required to move tangentially on their desired paths with a given
velocity, we redene the desired velocity to be tracked as v
di
=
v
di

i
, where
i
is a path parameter characterizing a desired path.
While robots move along their predened paths, to ensure their
cooperation, the path parameters should be synchronized with
the center of the virtual structure that denes the rigid formation.
That is
i

0
0 i = 1, . . . , n. To do so, let

i
=

i
+
i
(d
RP(i)
). (11)
For path following, we assume rst that

i
= 0; then, we
disregard this assumption when we deal with the group coop-
eration. Linearizing (9) about an operating point using Taylor
series would give the TakagiSugent fuzzy model for M
j
lin-
guistic rule as [36]
if X
i
is (X
ieq
,
ieq
), then

X
i
= A
j
i
X
i
+ B
j
i
i
(12)
where

X
i
= X
i
X
ieq
and

ieq
=
i

ieq
. The matrices A
j
i
and B
j
i
can be found as:
A
j
i
=
f
i
X
j
i
X
ieq
,
ieq
B
j
i
=
f
i
j
i
X
ieq
,
ieq
.
This denition gives the following:
A
j
i
=
_
v
di
(
eq
i
)
cos(
eq
i
+
eq
i
) + v
di

eq
i
sin(
eq
i
+ (
eq
i
)
)
0
v
di

i
sin(
eq
i
+ (
eq
i
)
)
0
_
B
j
i
=
_
cos
eq
i
0
0 1
_
(13)
where ()
= /d
RP(i)
. Let
j
be the membership function of
the inferred system set corresponding to each operating point;
therefore, the linearized system would be written as
X
i
=
r
j=1
(
j

X
i
+ B
j
i
j
i
)
r
j=1

j
(14)
where (j = 1, . . . , r) and r is the number of rules. Then for
each model, we select a fuzzy-state feedback controller of the
form

j
i
= K
j
i
(X
i
X
ieq
) .
The structure of the inferred controller is then as follows:
i
=
r
j=1

j
K
j
i
X
j
i
r
j=1

j
. (15)
The inferred closed-loop fuzzy system has the following
form:
X
i
=
r
K=1
r
j=1

k
j
(A
j
i
B
j
i
K
j
i
)X
i
r
K=1
r
j=1

k
j
. (16)
The matrix K
j
i
is chosen such that the matrix (A
j
i
B
j
i
K
j
i
) is
Hurwitz. Stability for the equilibriumpoints of the fuzzy system
(16) are known and reduce to nd an appropriate Lyapunov
function, such that there exists a common positive matrix P
i
verifying
(A
j
i
B
j
i
K
j
i
)
T
P
i
+ P
i
(A
j
i
B
j
i
K
j
i
) < 0 j = 1, . . . , r
and
Q
jKT
i
P
i
+ P
i
Q
jKT
i
< 0
where
Q
jk
i
= 0.5((A
j
i
B
j
i
K
j
i
) + (A
k
i
B
k
i
K
k
i
)).
From this, we can show that the equilibrium of the fuzzy
system (16) is globally asymptotically stable.
D. Stability Proof of the Cooperative Algorithm
To consider the cooperation between the robots, we will make
use of the virtual structure approach. We will no longer suppose
that

i
= 0, since it will be a corrective signal to ensure synchro-
nization of the robot along with the center of the virtual structure
of the rigid formation. The fuzzy system (16) considering the
corrective term

s
i
is rewritten as follows:
X
i
=
r
K=1
r
j=1

k
j
(A
j
i
B
j
i
K
j
i
)X
j
i
r
K=1
r
j=1

k
j
+
r
K=1
r
j=1

k
j
H
j
i
X
j
i
r
K=1
r
j=1

k

i
(17)
where H
j
i
is dened as
H
j
i
=
_
v
di
sin(
eq
i
+ (
eq
i
)
) v
di
sin(
eq
i
+ (
eq
i
)
)
0 0
_
.
(18)
Dene the Lyapunov function for this system as
V = 0.5
n
i=1
X
T
i
P
i

X + (
i

0
)
2
. (19)
Fig. 17. Mobile robot (EtsRo).
The differentiation of this lyapunov function gives the
following:
V =
n
i=1
X
T
i
Q
i

X
i
+ (
i

0
)(

i
+
i
(d
RP(i)
)
0
)
+
r
K=1
r
j=1

k
j
H
j
i
X
j
i
r
K=1
r
j=1

k

i
. (20)
Choose

i
(d
RP(i)
) =
0
=
i
(t)(1 k
1
e
k
2
(tt
0
)
)(1 tanh(d
T
RP
d
RP
))
where d
RP
=
_
d
RP(1)
, d
RP(2)
, . . . , d
RP(n)
T
; this yields
V =
n
i=1
X
T
i
Q
i

X
i
+
_
r
K=1
r
j=1

k
j
H
j
i
X
j
i
r
K=1
r
j=1

k
j
+ (
i

0
)
_

i
. (21)
If we choose

i
=
i
_
r
K=1
r
j=1

k
j
H
j
i
X
j
i
r
K=1
r
j=1

k
j
+ (
i

0
)
_
=
i
i
then from (21), we will have
V =
n
i=1
X
T
i
Q
i

X
i

i
2
i
(22)
which is negative denite. This shows by Barbalets lemma that
X
i
0 and
i
0. It is easy to see then that by construction,
we have
i

0
0.
IV. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
A. Experimental Setup
Fig. 17 shows the EtsRo mobile robot used for the experi-
mental setup. EtsRo is a unicycle-type mobile robot, with the
front wheels equipped with two dc motors 7.5 V and 175 r/min,
which installed on the right and left front wheels. The incremen-
tal Encoders are mounted on the motors counting a resolution
of 6000 Pulses/Turn. The wheels have radius of r = 4.5 cm,
the length, width, and height of EtsRo are 23, 20, and 11 cm,
respectively. The total weight of robot is around 2.3 kg. The
maximum linear velocity is 1.12 m/s and maximum angular
velocity is 5.74 rad/s. The linear and angular velocities of indi-
vidual robots are obtained by [31] the following:
v =
v
R
(t) + v
L
(t)
2
, =
v
R
(t) v
L
(t)
L
(23)
Fig. 18. Control architecture of EtsRo.
Fig. 19. General view of experimental setup.
where v
R
(t) and v
L
(t) denote the right and left velocities and
L shows the distance between the two actuated wheels.
EtsRo has two-level control architecture. A low-level control
algorithm is written in C language and run with a sampling
time of T
s
= 10 ms. This is a PID controller and designed to
give the best accuracy for the right and left motors. The high-
level controller, which is a fuzzy controller, is designed in real-
time simulink (MATLAB) with a sampling time of T
s
= 50 ms.
Fig. 18 demonstrates the control and cooperation architecture
for the mobile robots.
Fig. 19 shows the structural design of the control, path plan-
ning, and cooperative behavior for the group of mobile robots be-
ing used in the experimental tests. A PC communicates through
a serial port and modem using application programming inter-
face mode with robots.
In this project, ATmega32 microcontroller is used, which
generates a PWM signal to control the motor speed. ZigBee
USB-RF modem is the communication device, which is used to
transmit the data. The range of modem is about 100 m making
it a high-quality modem for indoor applications. The speed of
ZigBee modem is set for 9600 bit/s. To illustrate the perfor-
mance of the proposed cooperation and control scheme, some
tests were done on different paths with three mobile robots.
B. Experimental Results
In this section, we discuss the results of different formations
of robots. These formations are as follows:
1) where robots travel on paths with different lengths,
2) where robots travel on paths with the same lengths but the
robots are not placed on the paths.
Fig. 20. Reference paths and real robots trajectories.
Fig. 21. Path-following errors y
err(i)
.
In the rst test, paths that have different lengths are consid-
ered. In this scenario, robots are placed on a common vertical
line with initial position and lengths as
[x
1
(t
0
), y
1
(t
0
),
1
(t
0
)]
T
= [0, 1, 0]
T
L
1
= 5.41 m
[x
2
(t
0
), y
2
(t
0
),
2
(t
0
)]
T
= [0, 0, 0]
T
L
2
= 7.75 m
[x
3
(t
0
), y
3
(t
0
),
3
(t
0
)]
T
= [0, 1, 0]
T
L
3
= 9.83 m.
Fig. 20 shows the reference and the actual robots trajecto-
ries in the rst scenario. The path tracking error y
err
is shown
in Fig. 21. As can be seen in these gures, the robots travel
along their paths with negligible errors and the formation is
experimentally successful.
Linear and angular velocities are plotted in Figs. 22 and 23,
respectively. These gures show that the robots travel with dif-
ferent velocities relative to the length of the path on which they
travel. We observe that robot 3 has the highest velocity (largest
path) and robot 1 the lowest velocity (shortest length).
In the second test, paths with same lengths are considered,
but robots are not placed on the paths. As can be seen in Fig. 24,
Fig. 24. Reference paths and real robots trajectories.
robots 1 and 3 are ahead of their paths and robot 2 is behind
its path. In this scenario, all paths have the same length as
L
1
= 7.76 m and the initial positions of robots are dened by
[x
1
(t
0
), y
1
(t
0
),
1
(t
0
)]
T
= [1, 2, 0]
T
[x
2
(t
0
), y
2
(t
0
),
2
(t
0
)]
T
= [1.5, 1, 0]
T
[x
3
(t
0
), y
3
(t
0
),
3
(t
0
)]
T
= [2, 2, 0]
T
.
Fig. 24 shows both the reference and the actual robots tra-
jectories in this scenario. This gure shows that to keep the
formation and cooperation between the MMR group, robots 1
and 3 come to a stop and allow robot 2 to travel faster to reach
them. As soon as robot 2 arrives at the same vertical point as
robots 1 and 3, they adjust their velocities so that all three robots
arrive at the desired sampling points at the same time.
Fig. 25. Path-following errors y
err(i)
.
The path-tracking error y
err
is shown in Fig. 25. As can be
seen in this gure, the errors reduce to zero as the robots catch
their predened paths.
The linear and angular velocities are plotted in Figs. 26 and
27, respectively. These gures show that robots 1 and 3 stop and
robot 2 moves faster to catch the path.
C. Results Comparison of Both the Fuzzy and the Nonlinear
Method
In this section, the results obtained by the proposed fuzzy
algorithm and a nonlinear control method proposed in [30] are
compared. Tables II and III show the results obtained by these
methods with the path following errors compared for tests 1, 2,
and 3 in which x
errtotal
, y
errtotal
,
total
, and mean square
TABLE II
COMPARISON BETWEEN NONLINEAR AND FUZZY CONTROLLER FOR TEST 1
TABLE III
COMPARISON BETWEEN NONLINEAR AND FUZZY CONTROLLER FOR TEST 2
error (MSE) can be calculated by the following:
x
errtotal
=
f
n=0
x
err(n)
f
y
errtotal
=
f
n=0
y
err(n)
f
total
=
f
n=0

(n)
f
MSE =
f
n=0
_
x
2
err(n)
+ y
2
err(n)
+
2
(n)
f
. (24)
Fuzzy logic mimics the way the human brain makes decisions,
thus, simplifying the computations needed by the algorithm
controller. As these tables show, when the robots move on their
desired paths, the fuzzy controller produces a smaller MSE
compared to the nonlinear method, which means that the robots
follow their paths more precisely. However, when the initial
positions of the robots are not on the desired paths (test 2) the
nonlinear control is faster at guiding them to their desired paths.
V. CONCLUSION
In this paper, real-time path following, control and cooper-
ation for a group of mobile robots has been presented using a
fuzzy logic controller. A two-level hierarchical controller was
designed to facilitate the best performance control algorithm.
Firstly, a low-level controller (PID) is used to adjust the left
and right motors velocities, and secondly, a high-level fuzzy
controller was used to perform the tasks of path following,
localization and cooperation. This cooperation method, which
was derived from the fuzzy logic and PID, empowers the robots
to move, follow and coordinate paths in different formations.
The outputs of the fuzzy module controller are the linear and
angular velocities of the individual robots. The experimental
results obtained using three different paths scenarios demon-
strate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm. Future work
will consider the improvement of the fuzzy algorithm for more
elaborated cases, such as crash avoidance among robots.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank Neil Burton for his collabo-
ration on presentation of this paper.
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Hasan Mehrjerdi (S09) was born in Tehran, Iran.
He received the B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in electri-
cal engineering from Ferdowsi University of Mash-
had, Mashhad, Iran, and Tarbiat Modares University,
Tehran, Iran, respectively. He is currently working
toward the Ph.D. degree in electrical and robotics en-
gineering as a member of the Power Electronics and
Industrial Control Research Group (GREPCI), Que-
bec University (
Ecole de Technologie Sup erieure),

Montreal, QC, Canada.
His research interests include mobile robotics, ar-
ticial intelligence, mobile robots coordination in known and unknown envi-
ronments, and nonlinear control.
Maarouf Saad (SM08) received the Bachelors and
Masters degrees in electrical engineering from the
Ecole Polytechnique, Montreal, QC, Canada, in 1982

and 1984, respectively, and the Ph.D. degree in elec-
trical engineering from McGill University, Montreal,
in 1988.
He joined the

Ecole de Technologie Sup erieure,
Quebec University, Montreal, in 1987, where he is
currently involved in teaching control theory and
robotics courses. His research interests include non-
linear control and optimization applied to robotics
and ight control systems.
Jawhar Ghommam was born in Tunis, Tunisia,
in 1979. He received the B.Sc. degree from the
Institut Nationale des Sciences Appliqu ees et de
Technologies (INSAT), Tunisia, In 2003, the M.Sc.
degree in control engineering from the Labora-
toire dInformatique, de Robotique et de Micro-
electronique (LIRMM), Montpellier, France, in 2004,
and the Ph.D. in control engineering and indus-
trial computers, in 2008, jointly from the Univer-
sity of Orl eans, France, and the Ecole Nationale
dIng enieurs de Sfax, Tunisia.
He is currently an Assistant Professor of control engineering at the INSAT,
Tunisia. He is a member of the research unit on Intelligent Control and Opti-
mization of Complex Systems. His research interests include nonlinear control
of underactuated mechanical systems, adaptive control, guidance and control of
underactuated ships, and cooperative motion of nonholonomic vehicles.

Formation tracking
control of non-
holonomic mobile
robots
This article appeared in a journal published by Elsevier. The attached

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Author's personal copy
Available online at www.sciencedirect.com
Journal of the Franklin Institute 350 (2013) 22912321
Robust cooperative control for a group of mobile robots
with quantized information exchange
Jawhar Ghommam
a,n
, Magdi S. Mahmoud
b
, Maarouf Saad
c
a
Control & Energy Management, The National School of Engineering at Sfax, Tunisia.
b
System Engineering Department, KFUPM, KSA
c
Dpartement de gnie lectrique cole de technologie suprieure 1100, rue Notre-Dame Ouest
Montral, Qubec, Canada
Received 27 October 2012; received in revised form 11 April 2013; accepted 31 May 2013
Available online 17 June 2013
Abstract
In this paper we investigate the cooperative tracking control problem with quantized time delay
information exchange for a group of wheeled mobile robots networked through a connected graph modeling
the underlying communication topology. A cooperative controller is proposed using a combination of
backstepping technique, graph theory and neural network radial basis functions. We show, using the small
gain theorem, that the states of each mobile robot in the group converge to and remain inside a tube centered
around its assigned trajectory to form a desired geometric pattern whose centroid is assumed to move along
a predened trajectory. Experimental results on a group of three mobile robots forming a triangular shape
are presented to demonstrate the good performance of the proposed cooperative controller.
& 2013 The Franklin Institute. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
Cooperative control of autonomous vehicles has recently emerged as an active area of research
and has drawn the attention of multidisciplinary researchers because of its potential applications
in both civilian and military sectors. Many efforts have been directed towards the deployment of
groups of networked autonomous mobile robots that interact autonomously with one another and
with the environment to signicantly improve the efciency, performance, recongurability, and
robustness that individual vehicles currently do not have. The main challenge in cooperative
www.elsevier.com/locate/jfranklin
0016-0032/$32.00 & 2013 The Franklin Institute. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jfranklin.2013.05.031
n
Corresponding author. Tel.: +216 26 269 813.
E-mail address: jawhar.ghommam@gmail.com (J. Ghommam).
control of mobile robots is to cooperatively control the robots' positions such as the conguration
of the group asymptotically stabilizes at some desired geometric pattern.
There have been various control strategies for mobile robot formation reported in the literature,
such as the behavior-based approach [3,15,18,22,27,37] whose idea is mainly to assign to a
robot, henceforth called an agent, several desired behaviors to different excitations to the whole
system; for each response a control action is dened with respect to weighted average of all
possible behaviors. The virtual-structure approach [2,11,24,25,31] consists in dening a desired
dynamics of the group to move as a rigid body. The motion of each vehicle is determined relative
to a corresponding point on the rigid body. In the leaderfollower approach [26,29,32,33] one of
the robots is designated as the leader, while the others are designated as followers. The follower
robots need to position themselves relative to the leader and need to maintain a desired relative
position with respect to the leader. In this approach, the leader vehicle implements only local
controller for trajectory tracking/following while the followers implement controllers that depend
on their own states and that of the leader. In the articial potential approach [13], navigation
functions are proposed where their gradients are being used in the control design which combine
attractive forces to the target and repelling forces exerting the mobile robot to avoid collisions
with neighboring vehicles. Inherent limitations of the articial potential functions have been
pointed out in [46] including trap situations due to the existence of local minima, nonability of
passage between tight spaced obstacle, etc. Many other works on cooperative control of multiple
mobile robots have been thoroughly presented in the literature. In [13,16], the authors proposed a
formation controller based on a centralized scheme where only a single controller is responsible
for the generation of free trajectory-collision among the vehicles. However, this approach lacks
robustness with respect to limited communication or information losses and agents failure.
In contrast to decentralized scheme, the formation controller is less likely to be affected by errors
in communication or in the presence of members failure. Also this scheme allows greater
autonomy for the robots and less computational load in control implementations [20,22,36]. An
important approach that has recently been extensively studied in decentralized cooperative
control with applications to mobile robots is the consensus algorithms [38] in which main idea
relies on the use of algebraic graph theory [5]. The authors in [1] proposed some cooperative
solutions to the consensus problem by using the nearest neighbor rules which force the states of
each agent to converge to a common value. At the very beginning, consensus algorithms have
been applied to agents modeled with single integrator dynamics, both in continuous and discrete-
time settings (see [7,45] and the reference therein). Since fully actuated systems can be modeled
as double-integrator dynamics through feedback linearization, consensus algorithms for such
dynamics are studied in [39]. However, most applications of cooperative control involve systems
that are underactuated and/or nonholonomic. It is then necessary to discuss cooperative control of
multiple nonholonomic agents. State agreement for nonholonomic unicycles was discussed in
[10]. Pioneer work on cooperative control of nonholonomic mobile robots was reported in
[43,44] where the authors considered general framework for cooperative control of multiple
nonholonomic mobile robots in chained form. The cooperative controller derived for each
vehicle is designed with the aid of s-processes and notions from graph theory, the cooperative
controller is then extended to consider constant time delay and switching communication
problems.
In the literature, most existing works study the simple case in which mobile robots acquire
information from their neighboring peers through realtime sensing. However, in practice, most
used sensors in the network are coarse, and the broadcasted information can only be acquired
through a digital communication channel with limited bandwidth. To overcome the problem of
J. Ghommam et al. / Journal of the Franklin Institute 350 (2013) 22912321 2292
limitation, the information is processed by quantizers. As a result, several contributions have
been devoted to design robust cooperative controllers using quantized information [10,14,17,30].
Despite the interest of the results presented in the aforementioned papers, they are still limited to
agent with simple integrator or double integrator dynamic. More recently, the work [4] has
studied a passivity approach to coordinated motion of agents which take into account in the
meantime complex dynamics and quantized measurements. In [34], an interesting application on
cooperative tracking control based quantization-measurements was developed for a group of two
UAVs to track a target moving on the ground.
However, in practice, the dynamics of mobile robots are often complex and cannot be ignored
or are severely simplied for cooperative control design purposes. For this reason, few have
considered the dynamics and uncertainty in the vehicle's model to design decentralized
cooperative controllers. An attempt to solve cooperative control for general nonholonomic
mobile robots by considering physical dimensions and uncertainty in the dynamics of the
nonholonomic robots is considered [21,43]. The proposed design relies on a suitable state/input
transformations that facilitate the application of the backstepping technique which allows to
design an adaptive cooperative controller. In this approach, computation of the regression
matrices is required in these designs and thus, the computational load increases in the control
implementations. Recently, the authors in [8] presented a centralized strategy for the formation of
a team of underwater vehicles, in which the authors succeeded to overcome the limitations of the
model-based control. An approximation-based control is therefore employed to compensate for
model uncertainties and unknown environmental disturbances.
Although the theoretical study in the aforementioned papers, addressing centralized/
decentralized cooperative controllers has solved many problems in distributed multi-robot
coordination. There are still some issues that deserve further investigation, since so far the quality
of the data being sent throughout the network is assumed to reach its destination without losses
or distortions. Furthermore, current cooperative algorithms for wheeled mobile robots [42,44]
have the drawback of being susceptible to perturbations associated with sensors noises.
In this paper, we investigate the quantization effect in cooperative control problem. We therefore
consider the control problem of multiple nonholonomic mobile robots whose purpose is to converge
to a desired geometric pattern whose centroid is supposed to move on a trajectory reference dened
by the user. The design of the cooperative controller is twofold: A kinematic cooperative controller is
rstly designed under the assumption that each robot possesses a quantized estimate of the relative
position of a subset of a neighbor robot at each time. To facilitate the control design, the robot
kinematic model is transformed into single integrator-like model to which a modied consensus
algorithm with quantized information is proposed. Stability property is proved using the Lyapunov
theory and elements from graph theory. Due to practical considerations, the proposed consensus
algorithm takes into account the time delay in the communication. It is shown under suitable choice
of the quantizer parameter and the control gain that the kinematic cooperative closed loop systems
with our proposed controllers is robust to time varying communication delay. In the second step,
using the backstepping technique, the dynamic cooperative controller is proposed based on the
mobile robot dimensions and dynamics. Since we assume that the physical parameters of the robots
are unknown, the cooperative dynamical controller is designed motivated by using the neural
network approximation-based method. Both cooperative controllers working together form two
interconnected cooperative subsystems, by which the boundedness of one subsystem is dependent on
the boundedness of the other. Using notion from input-to-state ISS modular approach stability [6] and
the small gain theorem [47], we show that the overall cooperative system is bounded and therefore all
involved signals are bounded.
The main contributions of the paper are: (1) the design of a quantized consensus algorithm
that allows decentralized control of a ock of multiple mobile robots; (2) the use of the
approximation-based control techniques to compensate for uncertainties of the dynamic model;
and (3) a validation of the proposed cooperative controller is presented through experimental
results showing the effectiveness of the cooperative controller on a three mobile robots test bench
from the ETS, Montreal.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows: Section 2 presents the mathematical model of the
mobile robot and formally states the control problem. In Section 3, the cooperative controller is
rst designed for the kinematic model, then extend to consider the complete dynamics of the
robots. Section 4 includes experimental results to show the effectiveness of the proposed
cooperative controller. Finally, Section 5 concludes the paper.
Notation: For clarity of the presentation, we will present some notations to make the concept
in the following development precise. We will denote by :x: the standard Euclidian norm of a
vector xR
n
and by :A: the induced norm of a matrix AR
nn
.
2. Problem statement and preliminaries
In this section, the motion and dynamic description of the nonholonomic mobile robot
proposed by [41] is reviewed. The problem formulation for the cooperative control algorithm of
multiple mobile robots is provided thereafter.
2.1. Mobile robot modeling
We consider a group of n mobile robots. The mobile robot i is equipped with two actuated rear
wheels and two front passive wheels as shown in Fig. 1 that has the following kinematic and
dynamic models [41]:
_
i
J
i
i
M
i
_
i
C
i
_
i
i
D
i
i
F
i
1
Fig. 1. A two-wheeled mobile robot.
where
i
x
i
; y
i
;
i
denotes the position x

i
; y
i
, and the heading
i
of the i-th robot in the earth
xed frame OXY,
i

1i
;
2i
is the vector of the angular velocities, with

1i
and
2i
being the
angular velocities of the wheels of the robot i, F
i
F
1i
; F
2i
is the torque input vector with F

1i
and F
2i
being the control torques applied to the wheels of the robot i. Note, with the type of
mobile robots used in this work, only the torque controllers are needed for this formation
application instead of speed controllers (i.e., the dynamic model of the DC motors is not
considered in the implementation of the controller). The Jacobian matrix J
i
i
is given by
J
i
i

r
i
2
cos
i
sin
i
b
1
i
cos
i
sin
i
b
1
i
_ _
;
where b
i
is the half width of the mobile robot and r
i
is the radius of the actuated wheels.
The center of the mass for the i-th mobile robot is located a distance d
i
away from the middle
point between the left and right wheels. The mass matrix M
i
, Coriolis matrix C
i
_
i
, and
damping matrix D
i
in Eq. (1) are given by
M
i

m
11i
m
12i
m
12i
m
11i
_ _
;
D
i

d
11i
0
0 d
22i
_ _
; C
i
_
i

0
i
_
i
_
i
0
_ _
where d
jji
, j 1,2 are the damping coefcients and
i
1=2b
i
r
2
i
m
i
a
i
; where a
i
is the distance
from the origin x
i
; y
i
to the center of the mass of the mobile robot, b
i
and r
i
are physical
parameters of the mobile robot.
Assumption 1. The inertia matrix, the damping and coriolis matrices are assumed to be
unknown, but bounded.
For convenience, we convert the wheel velocities
1i
and
2i
of the robot i to its linear, v
i
, and
angular,
i
, velocities by the relationship
i
B
1
i

i
; B
i

1
r
i
1 b
i
1 b
i
_ _
2
where
i
v
i
;
i
. It is noted that B
i
is invertible since detB
i
2b
i
=r
i
. With Eq. (2), we can
write the robot dynamics (1) in the following convenient form:
_ x
i
v
i
cos
i
_ y
i
v
i
sin
i
_
i

i
M
i
_
i
C
i
_
i
i
D
i
i
B
i
F
i
3
where
M
i
B
1
i
M
i
B
i
; C
i
_
i
B
1
i
C
i
_
i
B
i
D
i
B
1
i
D
i
B
i
; B
i
B
1
i
The mobile robot's model presented in Eq. (3) is partitioned into two parts: a kinematic and a
dynamic part. Therefore to solve the coordination tracking control problem we need to apply the
backstepping technique in combination with some results from graph theory [5]. The following
subsection will introduce some basic concept in algebraic graph theory.
2.2. Concepts in graph theory
A network of cooperative mobile robots consists in a group of n vehicles that interact between each
other to move in a coordinated manner, in order to perform a given task. To be able to solve the
coordination problem, the rst thing we need to know is how the information is exchanged among the
robots. Graph theory is an excellent tool that models the ow of information in the network. Let
G fV; Eg be a directed graph, where V f1; 2; ; ng denotes the set of nodes, where the i-th node
represents the mobile robot in the network. E is the set of edges which draws the ow of information
among the robots. An edge i; jE if and only if there is a communication between robot i and robot j.
We call G a connected graph, if for any vertices v
i
; v
j
V, there exists a path of edges in E
from v
i
to v
j
. The incidence matrix DG of a graph G is the {0, 7 1}-matrix with rows and
columns indexed by vertices V and edges of E, respectively, such that an element d
ij
of DG is
equal to 1 if the node i is the head of the edge j and equal to 1 if node i is the tail of the edge j
and equal to 0 otherwise. Dene a diagonal matrix G with rows and columns indexed by V
with ii entry equal to the degree of node i and dene the n n adjacency matrix AG in which
components a
ij
are given by a
ij
1 if i; jE and a
ij
0 otherwise. The Laplacian of a graph G
as dened in [5] is given by
L GAGR
nn
4
Another variant for the graph Laplacian denition using the incidence matrix is given as
L DGDG
R
nn
5
It can be veried from [28] that for an undirect graph G with a degree matrix and adjacency matrix A,
given the incidence matrix D of this graph, then DGDG
GAG. It is to be noted that if the

graph G is connected then the graph Laplacian LR
nn
is symmetric, with a simple eigenvalue at zero
and an associated eigenvector 1 1
n1
. The rest of the eigenvalues are positive.
We call a root node in a graph G, a node that has no parent and has connection to every other
node within the graph. A tree is a graph where nodes have exactly one parent except for the root
node. We call a spanning tree of a connected graph G is a spanning subgraph of G which is a tree.
Assumption 2. The graph that models the underlying communication is connected and has a
spanning tree.
Since the graph Laplacian has at least a zero eigenvalue, it is essential to nd an equivalent
matrix in which spectrum equals to that of the graph Laplacian without the eigenvalue 0
corresponding to the eigenvector 1. We will exploit the L-decomposition of the Laplacian matrix
in the development that follows.
Lemma 2.1 (Ghabcheloo et al. [35]). Assuming that the graph G is connected then, the
Laplacian matrix of the graph G can be decomposed as L D
1
Y
2
D
1
, where D
1
R
nn1
is a full
rank incidence matrix and Y40 is an n n real matrix.
From Lemma 2.1, it is easy to verify that Rank D
1
n1 and D
1
D
1
is invertible and that
D
1
1 0. Let x
i
R denote the position of an agent i. Let x x
1
; ; x
n
denote the vector of all

agents' positions. Let z z
1
; z
2
; ; z
n
denote a vector of real variables assigned to each edge of

the graph G. If zLx, then z
i

jN
i
x
i
x
j
and N
i
is the set of all vertices connected to vertex i
not containing the vertex i itself. Consequently, the fact that z0 is equivalent to have x
i
x
j
.
Similarly if we dene the graph-induced error z YD
1
x, then z0 is equivalent to z 0 and
therefore for all ij we have x
i
x
j
0.
2.3. Cooperative control problem
We propose to create a formation with a desired shape of a polygon such that the circumcenter
p
c
R
2
of the polygon moves along a desired trajectory p
d
x
d
t; y
d
t (see Fig. 2).
We assume throughout that each mobile robot knows exactly the reference trajectory to be
tracked by the polygon's circumcenter. Given a desired geometric pattern formed by n vertices,
dened by orthogonal coordinates R
ix
; R
iy
for all 1in, we assume that
n
i 1
R
ix
0;
n
i 1
R
iy
0 6
The control problem boils down to the design of a cooperative controller for each mobile robot
based on its local states, the information from its neighbors and the position of the circumcenter
Fig. 2. The formation geometric pattern setup.
p
c
R
2
of the polygon such that for all jN
i
:
lim
t-
x
i
x
j
y
i
y
j
_ _
R
xi
R
xj
R
yi
R
yj
_ _
0
0
_ _
lim
t-
1
n

n
i 1
x
i
1
n

n
i 1
y
i
_
_
_
x
d
y
d
_ _
0
0
_ _
7
The rst objective (7) justies the synchronization task in the sense that the group robots
converge to the desired geometric pattern, whereas the second objective of Eq. (7) ensures that
the circumcenter of the formation group asymptotically converges to the desired trajectory.
However, since we assumed that the dynamics of each vehicle robot in the group is unknown, the
cooperative control design must ensure robustness to unmodeled dynamics. For these reasons,
the control objective will be to design an adaptive cooperative controller such that, there exists a
compact set R
n
, a bound 40 and a time t
f
4t
0
so that the cooperative and the trajectory
error tracking are upper bounded by or otherwise the following limits hold for all jN
i
:
lim
t-
x
i
x
j
y
i
y
j
_ _
R
xi
R
xj
R
yi
R
yj
_ _ _
_
_
_
_
_
_
_
_
_
_ _
lim
t-
1
n

n
i 1
x
i
1
n

n
i 1
y
i
_
_
_
x
d
y
d
_ _
_
_
_
_
_
_
_
_
_
_
_
_
_
_
_
_
_
_
_ _
8
Remark 2.1. The desired formation structure dened in this paper is stationary, it could not
expand or shrink or rotate. This is mainly because the distance
R
xi
R
xj
2
R
yi
R
yj
2
_
separating neighbor robots is constant. To overcome this limitation and to ensure online updated
structure, one way is to consider time-varying offsets R
xi
and R
yi
. This issue will need to be
addressed in future work.
Remark 2.2. Note that at earlier steps of the backstepping procedure, only the kinematic of the
vehicle robot is considered in which, we neither assume that there are model uncertainties nor
external disturbances, therefore in order to show the fast convergence of the kinematic-
cooperative controller we show objectives (7) instead of Eq. (8).
3. Quantized cooperative control design
The formation tracking task is achieved only when the robots reach their locations in the
formation pattern. A close look at the dynamic system (3) shows that this system is of a strict
feedback form [19] to which, direct Lyapunov method and backstepping technique can be
applied to design the control input F
i
. The control design consists of two stages. In the rst stage
of the design, the kinematic equations of the mobile robot i are considered, with v
i
and
i
being
viewed as immediate controls to regulate the position of the actual robot at its desired location.
In the second stage, the dynamic equation of the mobile robot is considered to design the torque
input F
i
.
3.1. Stage 1: Kinematic design
The kinematic controller of the mobile robot is responsible for the task of position tracking of
the robot's location in the geometric formation pattern. To derive the kinematic controller, two
steps of the backstepping technique are used to fulll the position tracking. In the rst step, the
heading
i
and the linear velocity v
i
of the mobile robot i are used as controls to preform the
position tracking and cooperative control problem, respectively. In the second step, the angular
velocity
i
is used as intermediate control to ensure that the error between this actual angular
velocity and its immediate value stabilizes at the origin. To begin, we dene the following state
errors:
e
xi
x
i
x
d
R
xi
; e
yi
y
i
y
d
R
yi
9
where R
xi
and R
yi
are constant offsets, dened by the designer to draw a desired formation
pattern. Dene the formation error position as ~ e
i
e
xi
; e
yi
and the robot's position as

p
i
x
i
; y
i
. Inspired by the work of [12], we dene the following backstepping error variables:
v
ei
v
i
vi
;
ei

i
i
10
where
vi
and
i
are virtual controls to be determined later. The three rst equations of Eq. (3) in
terms of the new error variables rewrite
_ p
i
u
i

1i

2i
11
where u
i

i
vi
,
2i

i
v
ei
, with cos ; sin
and
1i

cos
ei
1 cos
i
sin
ei
sin
i
sin
ei
cos
i
cos
ei
1 sin
i
_ _
vi
From the denition of u
i
, it would be easy to determine the immediate control
i
and
vi
from
the knowledge of the expression of u
i
. To fulll the task of cooperative tracking of the i-th
mobile robot, we design the virtual control input u
i
using local state information of the i-th robot
and information from the neighboring robots as follows:
u
i
k
e
~ e
i

jN
i
~ e
i
~ e
j
_ p
d
12
where k
e
is a positive constant gain. Let u
d
be the linear velocity along the reference trajectory p
d
(i.e., :_ p
d
: u
d
) such that it veries u
2
d
4
2
, where is strictly positive. We have the following
lemma:
Lemma 3.1 (Dong [42]). The cooperative subsystem (11), under the assumption that linear
velocity u
d
is strictly positive and that the extra-terms
1i
and
2i
are null, with the cooperative
control law being designed as Eq. (12) ensures that the objectives (7) are satised.
Remark 3.1. Notice that the nonlinear terms
1i
and
2i
are neglected in the kinematic design
and will be dealt with in later steps of the backstepping procedure. The goal is then to design
suitable virtual controllers that cancel out those terms in the design.
In what follows, we consider the case where the measurement of the transmitted/received
coordinated states from vehicle i to vehicle j or vice versa is quantized. In this paper, we study a
simplied model of quantized information exchange. In particular each mobile robot is assumed
to have a quantized measurement Qx
i
x
j
and Qy
i
y
j
of the relative position of all its
neighbors jN
i
. The quantizer Q is a piecewise constant function dened as R-R. As in [9],
we assume that the quantizer Q is dened with respect to some given sensitivity N such that
there exists real number x4N40 and the following two conditions hold:
jQxxjN if jxjx 13
and
jQxj4xN if jxj4x 14
The values x and N refer to quantization range and the quantization error bound, respectively.
The rst condition provides a bound on the quantization error, that is outside the ball of radius x
around the origin, the quantizer saturates and the quantized measurements are not anymore
reliable. The second condition gives a method explaining how to detect quantization saturation.
This denition can be easily generalized to vector-valued quantizers. For any vector

1
;
2
; ;
n
R
n
, we dene the vector quantizer Q: : R
n
-R
n
to be Q Q
1
;
Q
2
; ; Q
n
. There are different quantization schedules, which can be divided into two
classes, the uniform and the nonuniform quantizers. The uniform quantization schedule is
characterized by the fact that the quantization regions are of equal size. On the other hand the
nonuniform quantization schedule is characterized by unequal quantization regions. Logarithmic
quantizer is classied among the nonuniform quantization schedules as it allows the adjustability
of the quantization step size according to the input value. The logarithmic quantizer is preferred
in this paper as it has the advantage over the uniform quantization technique to be less
demanding in terms of number of quantization subsets. In this paper, we seek sufcient
conditions for robust convergence of the coordinated states under logarithmic quantized
information (i.e., N
l
jxj). In the following, we consider two communication cases. In the rst
communication we assume that data transmission takes place without delays. In the second case
however, time varying delays occur while transmitting information among the vehicles.
Case1: Without communication delay. In the case of quantized information, the coordinated
controller (12) rewrites
u
i
k
e
~ e
i

jN
i
Q~ e
i
~ e
j
_ p
d
15
Assuming that the underlying graph that models the communication topology is connected, then
collectively, the cooperative controller (15) function of all robots can be written as follows:
u K
e
~ eI
p
D
1
YQ~ e
cc
_ p
d
16
where ~ e denotes the concatenation of vectors ~ e
1
; ; ~ e
, K
e
is an n-dimensional diagonal
matrix with equal diagonal entries k
e
, I
p
is the identity matrix with appropriate dimensions,
denotes the Kronecker product and ~ e
cc
I
p
YD
1
~ e. The resulting closed loop for the
cooperative subsystem is
~ e
K
e
~ eI
p
D
1
YQ~ e
cc
I
p
1
I
p
2
17
which can be written by displaying the error vector e
q
Q~ e
cc
~ e
cc
as
~ e
K
e
~ eI
p
D
1
Y~ e
cc
I
p
D
1
Ye
q
I
p
1
I
p
2
18
The next lemma shows that the cooperative control law (15), with the cancelation of the last two
terms, yields exponential stability of the equilibrium points of Eq. (18) under suitable choice of
the quantizer parameter
l
.
Lemma 3.2. Consider the kinematic equation (11) with
1
0 and
2
0 with u
i
being
dened as in Eq. (15). Suppose that the underlying communication graph G is connected, when
the quantizer is logarithmic which gain
l
satises
l
o
min
K
e
I
p
YD
1
D
1
Y
:I
p
YD
1
D
1
Y:
19
where
min
K
e
I
p
YD
1
D
1
Y is the minimum eigenvalue of the matrix K
e
I
p
YD
1
D
1
Y,
then the equilibrium points ~ e
cc
exponentially stabilize to zero.
Proof. Pre-multiplying Eq. (18) by I
p
YD
1
, set
1
0 and
2
0 results in
~ e
cc
K
e
~ e
cc
I
p
YD
1
D
1
Y~ e
cc
I
p
YD
1
D
1
Ye
q
20
Consider the following Lyapunov function associated to the dynamic equation (20):
V
1

1
2
~ e
cc
~ e
cc
21
in which time derivative along the solutions of Eq. (20) gives
_
V
1
~ e
cc
K
e
~ e
cc
~ e
cc
I
p
YD
1
D
1
Y~ e
cc
~ e
cc
I
p
YD
1
D
1
Ye
q
min
K
e
I
p
YD
1
D
1
Yj~ e
cc
j
2

l
:I
p
YD
1
D
1
Y:j~ e
cc
j
2
22
choosing
l
such as given in Eq. (19), yields
_
V
1
cV
1
23
where c
min
K
e
I
p
YD
1
D
1
Y
l
:I
p
YD
1
D
1
Y:. It can be veried by construction of
the incidence matrix D
1
, that YD
1
D
1
Y is positive denite, it follows from the fact that K
e
is also
positive denite, that the eigenvalues of K
e
I
p
YD
1
D
1
Y are nonnegative. If
l
veries the
condition (19), this would imply that c is strictly positive. From Eq. (23), it is seen that V
1
exponentially converges to zero. Applying the comparison lemma to Eq. (23), we have
V
1
~ e
cc
te
2ctt
0
V
1
~ e
cc
0 and consequently all elements of ~ e
cc
exponentially converge to
zero with a convergence rate C
r

2c
p
. This completes the proof.
In the previous controllers, we did not consider the time delay incurred in the communication
channels. In practice, however, there is always time delay. In what follows, we consider
communication with constant time delay .
Case2: With communication delay. Considering that the time delay in the communication
channels would modify the cooperative controller (12) as follows:
u
i
k
e
~ e
i

jN
i
~ e
i
t~ e
j
t _ p
d
24
it is seen that, only the local information from robot j is sent with time delay to robot i. This
information from robot j needs to be encoded then decoded before reaching the robot i in the
network. As a consequence, for the simplicity of the protocol implementation as well as the
stability analysis, a quantized version of the controller (15) is considered to only take into
account the quantization effect of the relative position of the neighboring robots as follows:
u
i
k
e
~ e
i

jN
i
Q~ e
i
t~ e
j
t _ p
d
25
Dene the individual quantized error for each mobile robot as e
qij
t Q~ e
i
t
~ e
j
t~ e
i
t~ e
j
t. Then the kinematic cooperative closed-loop system can be written as
~ e
i
k
e
~ e
i

jN
i
~ e
i
t~ e
j
t
jN
i
e
qij
t 26
which in matrix form by dening e
q
1
jN
i
e
qij
t
_
, can be expressed as
~ e
K
e
~ e~ et A~ ete
q
27
Remark 3.2. Note that, in previous works like in [42,44], the time delay in the communication
channel is considered to be a constant known time. In contrast, in this paper, not only the
information is quantized but also treated with unknown time delay, which might be time varying
but bounded.
The following lemma will help the development that follows. Recall the following result:
Lemma 3.3 (The Integral Inequality, Gu [23]). For any constant matrix 0oR
nn
, scalar
n
oto
and vector function _ x :
;
n
-R
n
such that the following integration is well-
dened, then it holds that for l xt
n
xt
we have
_
t
n
t
_ x
s_ xs dsl

l
First we introduce the following short-hand notations:
^
N e
2s
N;
^
U e
2s
U;
^
Q e
2s
Q;
^
M e
2s
M;
^
R e
2s
R 28
for some scalars s; ; and matrices N; U. It is assumed henceforth that the delay t is a
differentiable time-varying function satisfying
0oot; _ t 29
where the bounds ; and are known constant scalars. Observe that there is no restriction on
the derivative of the time-varying delay function thereby allowing fast time-delays to occur.
Remark 3.3. It follows from Eqs. (13)(14) that there exist sensitivity N and a real number
satisfying e4N40 such that the difference in the quantized error :~ e
i
t~ e
i
t:e
i
holds
when :e
q
:N. This implies that for the class of delays satisfying Eq. (29), there exists quantizer
with sensitivity N satisfying
N~ e
i
tQ~ e
i
t~ e
i
t~ e
i
t~ e
i
t 30
The next lemma shows that the cooperative control law (27) extends the properties of the
cooperative control law (15) under suitable choice of the quantizer sensitivity N.
Lemma 3.4. Consider the kinematic equation (11) with
1
0 and
2
0 with u
i
being
dened as in Eq. (27). Suppose that the underlying communication graph G is connected,
when the quantizer is logarithmic with sensitivity N satisfying Eq. (30). Given the bounds
40; 40; 40 and a scalar convergence rate s40, the closed-loop system (26) is
delay-dependent globally exponentially stable if there exist matrices 0oP; 0oW; 0oN;
0oM; 0oQ; 0oR; 0oU; Z satisfying the following LMIs:
2
N
2
^
UoW
^

o
0 I
^
N 0 0

c
^
U 0 0

m
^
U 0

n
0

e
_
_
_
_
o0 31
o
ZZ
^
N
^
Q
^
R
^
M;
c
Q
^
U
^
N;
n

^
R
^
U;
m
1M 2
^
U;
e
W
2 ^
N
2
^
U 32
is feasible, then the equilibrium points ~ e
c
exponentially stabilizes to zero. Moreover, the matrix
gain K
e
is given by K
e
P
1
Z.
Proof. We introduce the following Lyapunov function associated to the dynamic equation (20):
V
2
t V
o
t V
a
t V
c
t V
e
t V
m
t V
n
t
V
o
t e
2st
~ e
tP~ et; V
m
t
_
0
_
t
ts
e
2ss
~ e
N ~ e
d ds;
V
a
t e
2s
_
t
t
e
2ss
~ e
sQ~ es ds; V
n
t
_

_
t
ts
e
2ss
~ e
U~ e
d ds;
V
c
t e
2s
_
t
tt
e
2ss
~ e
sM~ es ds; V
e
t e
2s
_
t
t
e
2ss
~ e
sR~ es ds 33
where 0oP P
; 0oN N
; 0oQQ
; 0oRR
; 0oU U
; 0oMM
are
weighting matrices of appropriate dimensions. A straightforward computation gives the time-
derivative of V
2
t along the solutions of Eq. (20) and subject to Eq. (30) yields
_
V
2

_
V
o

_
V
a

_
V
c

_
V
e

_
V
m
e
2st
~ e
tPK
e
K
e
P~ et ~ e
PA~ et ~ e
tA
PA~ et
e
2st
e
2s
~ e
tQ~ et~ e
tQ~ et
e
2st
e
2s
~ e
tM~ et1~ e
tM~ et
e
2st
e
2s
~ e
tR~ et~ e
tR~ et
2
e
2st
~ e
t
^
N ~ e
te
2st
_
t
t
~ e
sN~ e
s ds
2
e
2st
~ e
t
^
U ~ e
te
2st
_
t
t
~ e
sU~ e
s ds 34
By applying the integral inequality of Lemma 3.3 on the integral terms of Eq. (34), we get
e
2s
_
t
t
~ e
N ~ e
d
~ et
~ et
_ _
e
2s
N e
2s
N
e
2s
N
_ _
~ et
~ et
_ _
~ et
~ et
_ _
^
N
^
N

^
N
_ _
~ et
~ et
_ _
35
Similarly,
e
2s
_
t
t
~ e
U~ e
d e
2s
_
t
t
~ e
U~ e
d
_
t
t
~ e
S~ e
d
_
_
t
t
~ e
e
2s
U~ e
d
_
_
t
t
~ e
e
2s
U~ e
d
_
_
t
t
~ e
de
2s
U
_
t
t
~ e
d
_ _
_
t
t
~ e
de
2s
U
_
t
t
~ e
d
_ _
~ et~ et
^
U~ et~ et
~ et~ et
^
U~ et~ et 36
Dene the extended vector
t ~ e
t ~ e
t ~ e
t ~ e
t ~ e
then by standard arguments, we obtain that

_
V
2
^
0 37
Setting Z PK
e
and invoking the S-procedure, there exists matrix 0oW;
2
N
2
^
UoW such that
^

^
I
WI; I 0; 0; ; I
This guarantees that
^
o0 in Eq. (31). This ensures that
_
V
2
o0 implying V
2
V
o
and :~ e:e
st
for some 40. This implies that the trajectories converge exponentially at a
rate s. Consequently lim
t-
~ e 0. It is obvious to conclude from Eq. (27) that
jN
i
Q~ e
i
t~ e
j
t-0 when time goes to innity. This concludes the proof.
At this stage, we considered that the nonlinear functions
1i
and
2i
are neglected to be able
to conclude about asymptotic agreements of the formation error states. These functions can now
be dealt with in the next steps of the backstepping procedure. We now need to solve
i
and
vi
from the expression of the cooperative controller u
i
in Eq. (15) or Eq. (24). In the following and
throughout the paper, we will only consider the cooperative controller (15) for the simplicity of
the analysis that follows:
cos
vi
k
e
e
xi

jN
i
Qe
xi
e
xj
_ x
d
38
sin
vi
k
e
e
yi

jN
i
Qe
yi
e
yj
_ y
d
39
Expressions (38) and (39) allow to solve for the virtual controls
i
and
vi
respectively:
vi

cos
2
vi
sin
2
vi
_
k
2
e
e
2
xi
e
2
yi
e
2
xij
e
2
yij
2k
e
e
xi
e
xij
e
yi
e
yij
2_ x
d
e
x
ij
_ y
d
e
y
ij
u
2
d
1
2
40
i
2k arctan2 k
e
e
yi

jN
i
Qe
yi
e
yj
_ y
d
; k
e
e
xi

jN
i
Qe
xi
e
xj
_ x
d
_ _
41
where e
xij
and e
yij
refer to the cooperative terms in the x and y-coordinates (i.e.,
jN
i
Qe
xi
e
xj
and
jN
i
Qe
yi
e
yj
, respectively). arctan2 denotes a two-argument arctangent function which
produces results in the range ; . k is an integer chosen to ensure continuity and
differentiability of
i
. To continue our analysis, we need to know the differentiation of
i
and
vi
with respect to time. Considering the time derivative of the control u
i
u
i1
; u
i2
,
we have
_
u
i
_
vi
i
_
vi
0 1
1 0
_ _
i
42
Multiplying both sides of Eq. (42) with
, then solving for the time derivative of the virtual

control _
vi
yields
_
vi

_
u
1i
cos
i

_
u
2i
sin
i
43
On the other hand, multiplying both sides of Eq. (42) with
i
=
i
, then solving for the time
derivative of the virtual control
i
yields
_
i

u
i1
sin
_
u
i2
cos
vi
vi
i

_
u
i1
sin
_
u
i2
cos

vi
o
_
_
44
where is a very small positive constant chosen to avoid having
vi
0. In an ideal case, when
the error variables converge to zero in nite time, we implement Eq. (44) such that ou
d
. In
practice however, since the error variables from the backstepping procedure do not converge to
zero as in the ideal case, the virtual control
vi
may cross zero. In this case, is chosen such that
omin B
e
; u
d
with B
e
infB
eij
and B
eij
is the rst three terms under the square root sign of
Eq. (40).
We now consider
i
as an immediate control to stabilize
ei
at the origin, then dene the
following error variable:
ei

i
i
45
where
i
is a virtual control of
i
. Differentiating
ei
with respect to time gives the following:
_
ei

ei

_
u
i1
sin
_
u
i2
cos
vi
vi
_
u
i1
sin
_
u
i2
cos

vi
o
_
_
46
To determine the virtual control
i
, we propose the following Lyapunov function candidate:
V
2
V
1

1
2

n
i 1
2
ei
47
in which time derivative along the solutions of Eqs. (21) and (45) gives
_
V
2
V
1

n
i 1
ij;jN
i
Q~ e
i
~ e
j
1i

2i

n
i 1
ei
ei

i
_
V
1

n
i 1
ij;jN
i
Q~ e
i
~ e
j
2i

n
i 1
ei
ij;jN
i
Q~ e
i
~ e
j
1i
ei

ei

_
u
i1
sin
i

_
u
i2
cos
vi
vi
_
u
i1
sin
i

_
u
i2
cos

vi
o
_
_
_
_
_
_
_
_
_
_
_
_
48
Note that sin
ei
=
ei

_
1
0
cos
ei
d and cos
ei
1=
ei

_
1
0
sin
ei
d and there-
fore the cross product
ij;jN
i
~ e
i
~ e
j
1i
=
ei
is well dened. This allows to choose for the
virtual control
i
the following:
i
k
ei

_
u
i1
sin
i

_
u
i2
cos
vi
vi
_
u
i1
sin
i

_
u
i2
cos

vi
o
_
ij;jN
i
Q~ e
i
~ e
j
1i
ei
49
where k
i
is a positive constant.
Remark 3.4. The required information contained in the virtual control
i
are essentially the
measurement of the current robot's position and velocity, that is the state p
i
; _ p
i
, the desired
speed along the reference trajectory _ x
d
; _ y
d
and the states of neighboring robots jN
i
; ji. The
control gain k
i
will adjust the convergence rate of the robot orientation to its immediate value.
Note that, this virtual control is continuous as long as we keep
vi
away from zero and therefore
is differentiable in which time derivative will depend on local velocity measurement and velocity
of the neighboring robots which can be obtained by a suitable sensor.
Substituting Eq. (49) into the inequality equation (48) gives
_
V
2
V
1

n
i 1
k
2
ei

n
i 1
ij;jN
i
Q~ e
i
~ e
j
2i

n
i 1
ei
ei
V
1

n
i 1
k
2
ei

n
i 1
ij;jN
i
Q~ e
i
~ e
j
i
;
ei
_ _
ei
50
where
ei
v
ei
;
ei
. Next step in the backstepping control is the concern of the last stage of
the design, which is the dynamic part of the vehicle robot. Obviously in the second stage, the last
term in Eq. (50) will be canceled by choosing appropriately the control design F
i
.
3.2. Stage 2: Dynamic design
In the next section, we extend our design to the dynamic case, and we address a challenging
problem where parametric uncertainties exist in the dynamics of the i-th vehicle robot. We will
make use of the approximation-based methods to remove the requirement on the exact
knowledge of the i-th mobile parameters, and handle parametric uncertainties which exist in the
model. Using one further step of the backstepping procedure, a stable formation tracking control
is designed. Subsequently, we use the approximation-based function to compensate the unknown
entities in the control.
3.2.1. Neural network approximators
In order to estimate a given nonlinear function up to a small error tolerance, we employ the
radial basis function (RBF) network [40] to approximate a continuous function hZ : R
m
-R as
hZ W
SZ Z 51
where Z z
1
; z
2
; ; z
m
R
m
is the input vector to the approximator, W w
1
; w
2
; ; w
l
R
l
is the vector of adaptable weights, where l41 is the neural network node number, SZR
l
is
the vector of known continuous basis functions and is the approximation error over a compact
set
Z
. For convenience, we need the following assumption [40].
Assumption 3. In a compact set
Z
, the weights vector W and the approximation error Z are
bounded for all Z
Z
, that is there exists some strictly positive constants W
n
and
0
such that
:Z:
0
and :W:W
n
.
Remark 3.5. Although the bounds
0
and W
n
in Eq. (2) are assumed to exist, they will not be
needed in the design and do not have to be known. They only appear in the error bounds in the
proof of Theorem 3.1. However, for the stability analysis, we need to know an upper bound of
the vector SZ. Since we are using a Gaussian RBF network, an upper bound of SZ can be
taken as the limit of a convergent innite series
k 0
3 mk 2
m1
e
2c
2
k
2
=d
2
s
n
(see [6] and
the references therein for more details).
In the sequel, we consider a class of linearly parameterized neural network approximators,
which can smoothly approximate any continuous function hZ over the compact set
Z
R
q
to
arbitrary any degree of accuracy, such that we have
hZ W
n
SZ
n
Z Z
Z
R
m
52
where W
n
is the optimal weight in the output layer and
n
Z is the approximation error for the
case where W W
n
. The optimal weight value of the neural network that minimizes jZj for
all Z
Z
R
q
is dened as
W
n
arg min
WR
l
sup
Z
Z
:hZW
SZ:
_ _
53
3.2.2. Control design
In this stage, we design the real control input vector F
i
for the i-th vehicle robot. Before
proceeding to the design of the control input, we rewrite the dynamics of the robot in terms of the
error variable
ei
as follows:
M
i
_
ei
C
i
_
i
i
D
i
i
M _
vi
; _
B
i
F
i
54
To design the torque input F
i
, we consider the Lyapunov function candidate V
n
3
V
2

1
2
n
i 1
ei
M
i
ei
whose time derivative along the solutions of Eqs. (54) and (50) gives
_
V
3
V
1

n
i 1
k
2
ei

n
i 1
ei
_
C
i
_
i
i
D
i
i
M
i
_
vi
; _
B
i
F
i

ij;jN
i
Q~ e
i
~ e
j
i
;
ei
_ _
_
55
Ideally if the inertia, the Coriolis and Damping matrices were known, we would consider the
following desired control law:
F
n
i
B
1
i
K
ei

ij;jN
i
Q~ e
i
~ e
j
i
;
ei
_
_
B
1
i
C
i
_
i
i
D
i
i
M _
vi
; _
_
_
56
where K
diagk
i
; k
i
. Substituting Eq. (56) into Eq. (55) would result in
_
V
3
V
3
where
min ; min
i 1;2;;n
2k
i
; min
i 1;2;;n
2
min
K
min
M
i
_ _ _ _
Since the matrices M
i
; C
i
and D
i
are unknown, the model based control law (56) cannot be
implemented. To overcome this problem, we utilize the NNRBF approximators to estimate the
unknown entities in the control law as follows:
Let Z
i
_
i
;
i
; _
vi
; _
i
and h
i
Z
i
be dened as
h
i
Z
i
B
1
i
C
i
_
i
i
D
i
i
M _
vi
; _
i
57
we approximate the unknown term h
i
Z
i
using the NNRBF approximators as follows:
^
h
i
Z
i

^
W
i
S
i
Z
i
58
where
^
W
i
Blockdiag ^ w
1i
; ^ w
2i
are the approximation parameters and

S
i
Z
i
S
1i
Z
; S
2i
Z
. The term
^
W
i
S
i
Z
i
approximates W
n
i
S
i
Z
i
given by
h
i
Z
i
W
n
i
S
i
Z
i

i
59
therefore, if there is any uncertainty in the parameters of the i-th vehicle, the following control
law should be considered instead of Eq. (56):
F
n
i
B
1
i
K
ei
^
W
i
S
i
Z
i
B
1
i

ij;jN
i
Q~ e
i
~ e
j
i
;
ei
_ _
_ _
60
based on s-modication neural weight estimator [40] we design the adaptation law for
_
^
W
i
as
_
^
W
i

i
S
i
Z
i
ei
s
i
^
W
i
61
where
i

i
40, and s
i
40 are positive constant design parameters. For convenience of
stability, we rewrite the closed loop error dynamic system that consists of Eqs. (17), the dynamic
of
ei
, (54) and (61) as follows:
_
~ p
i
k
e
~ e
i

jN
i
Q~ e
i
~ e
j

1i

2i
_
ei
k
ei
~ e
i

1i
ei

ei
M
i
_
ei
K
ei
B
i
W
n
i
S
i
Z
i

i
^
W
i
S
i
Z
i
_
^
W
i

i
S
i
Z
i
ei
s
i
^
W
i
62
We can now state our main result of this paper in the following theorem whose proof is given in
the Appendix.
Theorem 3.1. Consider a network of underactuated mobile robots, each is described by the
dynamic model (1). Assume that the unidirectional graph G that maps the communication among
the robots is connected. We also assume that the data information being sent through the
communication channel is subject to quantization. Suppose that the quantizer used is logarithmic
in which gain satises Eq. (19). We further assume that the virtual point on the reference
trajectory to be tracked by the centroid of the polygon is always greater than a positive constant
. Take the cooperative adaptive controller (60) and the cooperative adaptive tuning law as Eq.
(61). Then, for bounded initial conditions, all signals of the closed loop system (62) are bounded.
In particular objectives in Eq. (8) are satised.
Remark 3.6. The cooperative control law and the updating laws developed in this paper can be
implemented on each mobile robot. The cooperative control law consists of a simple PD with
two nonlinear terms. The rst serves to cancel out some unwanted nonlinearities and the second
is an estimation of the model uncertainties whose adaptive update law is also implemented in
each mobile robot. An interesting aspect of this cooperative controller is its adaptive nature since
a complete knowledge of the robot dynamic is not required, therefore inclusion of some dynamic
effects like friction which usually cannot be modeled accurately can be easily compensated by
the NN cooperative controller. Compared with the work in [21,43], the development, using the
NNRBF to design a cooperative controller, is signicant since the computation of the regression
matrices needed for the design of decentralized controllers, as presented in [43], is avoided.
Remark 3.7. It is shown that the cooperative controller (60) with the update law (61) make the
signals of the closed-loop system bounded. The group of mobile robots will denitely come into
the desired formation pattern but with some shift which can be made arbitrary small by
appropriately adjusting the control gains k
i
; k
i
and k
e
such that the bound on c
n
and the
cooperative error :~ e
i
~ e
j
: (see Eq. (67) in the Appendix) are satised. Note also that the bound
on c
n
essentially depends on the smallest nonzero eigenvalue of the Laplacian graph:
min
L
consequently depends on the connectivity of the communication graph G. The analysis is shown
for the case of quantized information without time delay. However, similar results can be
obtained in the case of quantized information exchange with time delay.
4. Experiments
4.1. Experiment equipment
EtsRo vehicle is available at the Robotics Lab of the cole de Technologie Suprieure in
Montreal, supplied with an automatic navigation system. A picture of a team of three EtsRos is
depicted in Fig. 3. The EtsRo is a four-wheel car-like mobile robot, equipped with two driving
front wheels and DC motors 7.5 V and 175 r/min each. The EtsRo sensor equipments consist of
high precision wheel encoders giving the relative localization of the vehicle, mounted on the
motors counting (6000 pulses/turn). The wheels have radius of r4.5 cm, the length, width and
height of EtsRo are 23, 20 and 11 cm, respectively. The total weight of the robot is around
2.3 kg. The maximum linear velocity is 1.12 m/s and the maximum angular velocity is 5.74 rad/
s. Within each robot, a 32-bit micro-controller ATmega32 maintains support for all sensor and
actuation features of the robot and manages the navigation, guidance and control of the vehicle.
A control program is sent remotely by a Zigbee USB-Modem to EtsRos. The range of modem is
about 100 m which makes it a high-quality Modem for indoor applications. The host computer
executes programs which transmit the desired posture and the control commands to EtsRos
through an on-board micro-controller.
Two level controller architectures are designed to navigate and steer the EtsRos. The lower
one is a PID controller responsible to adjust the velocity of right and left wheels. A second order
lter is designed and implemented to lter sparks and unwanted noises on the velocities. The
higher level one is a nonlinear controller and is designed in realtime simulink (MATLAB) with a
sampling time of T
s
50 ms to navigate and steer the mobile robots with regard to the desired
cooperative controller.
4.2. Experimental data
In this section, we discuss the setup and results of robust cooperative control involving three
EtsRo mobile robots (see Fig. 3) currently available in our Lab. The environment in which the
Fig. 3. Three EtsRos mobile robots in the experiments.
Table 1
r
i
0.04 [m]
b
i
0.1 [m]
a
i
0.02 [m]
m
i
2.3 [kg]
m
wi
0.28 [kg]
I
i
0.01 [kg m
2
]
I
wi
0.0056 [kg m
2
]
I
mi
0.002 [kg m
2
]
v
i
[0, 1.12] [m s
1
]
i
[5.74, 5.74] [rad s
1
]
Fig. 4. Interaction topology between the robots.
0 2 4 6 8 10
3
2
1
0
1
2
3
x [m]
y
[
m
]
The centroide of the
formation
Desired trajectory for
the formation centroid
Fig. 5. Positions of three ETS robots at several times along their trajectories.
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90
0.2
0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1
1.2
1.4
1.6
Time[s]
e
x
i
[
m
]
,

i
=
1
,
,
3
e
x1
e
x2
e
x3
Fig. 6. Formation error tracking e
xi
.
robots can evolve is a rectangular eld 4 m 10 m. Assuming that the three robots are identical,
the nominal robot parameters (which were obtained via identication) are given in Table 1.
The expressions for each element of the mass matrix are given as
m
11i
0:25b
2
i
r
2
i
m
i
b
2
i
I
i
I
wi
m
12i
0:25b
2
i
r
2
i
m
i
b
2
i
I
i
m
i
m
i
2m
wi
; I
i
m
i
a
2
i
2m
wi
b
2
i
I
i
2I
mi
The initial conditions of the three mobile robots are 2; 0:1; 0; 2; 1; 0 and 1:7; 0:6; 0. We
assume bidirectional communication among the robots such that robot 1 is allowed to
communicate with robots 2 and 3 according to graph of Fig. 4 in which graph Laplacian and
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90
0.5
0.4
0.3
0.2
0.1
0
0.1
0.2
0.3
Time[s]
e
y
i
[
m
]

i
=
1
,
3
e
y1
e
y2
e
y3
yi
.
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90
0.2
0.1
0
0.1
0.2
0.3
0.4
0.5
Time[s]
e
i

[
r
a
d
]
,

i
=
1
,
,
3
e1

e2

e3
Fig. 8. Angular formation error tracking.
incidence matrix are
L
2 1 1
1 1 0
1 0 1
_
_
_
_
_
_ and DG
1 1
1 0
0 1
_
_
_
_
_
_
respectively. The reference path to be followed by the centroid of the formation shape is
generated using polynomial interpolation. The desired formation pattern is dened with some
offsets relative to the reference path such that the robots form a triangular formation pattern.
Therefore, the desired formation is dened by R
x1
; R
y1
0; 0; R
x2
; R
y2
2; 1 and
R
x3
; R
y3
2; 1. We choose the control parameters k
e
10; k
i
30, the matrix gain
K
diag50; 50 and the gain quantizer that satises inequality (19) is picked as
l
0:8.
The parameters presented in Table 1 are the nominal values for the vehicle's parameter dynamics.
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
0.7
0.6
0.5
0.4
0.3
0.2
0.1
0
0.1
0.2
0.3
Time[s]
x
i
x
j
,

i
j
=
1
,
,

3
x
1
x
2
x
1
x
3
x
2
x
3
Fig. 9. Coordination error x
i
x
j
.
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
0.2
0.15
0.1
0.05
0
0.05
0.1
0.15
0.2
0.25
Time[s]
y
i
y
j

i
j
=
1
,
,
3
y
1
y
2
y
1
y
3
y
2
y
3
Fig. 10. Coordination error y
i
y
j
.
In experimentation, we assume that those parameters are uncertain and consequently will be
adapted using the RBF approximators (61) in which, the basis functions are chosen to be of the
form S
ki
Z exp Z
i
Z
i
=
2
i
_
; k 1; ; n where
i
is the receptive eld and
i
is the
width of the Gaussian function. The NN design parameters are s
i
5 and
i
diag0:5; 0:5.
The initial weight
^
W
i
0 is a 2 by 2 zero square matrix.
The results of the formation with triangular shape pattern are shown in Fig. 5 with three robots
at several times. Figs. 68 show the formation errors, while Figs. 9 and 10 show the coordination
errors under the quantization effect of the broadcasted information. It can be seen that the three
robots converge to their desired geometric formation pattern and the robots converge to
neighborhood for their desired positions relative to the trajectory of the formation centroid. In
these experimentations, the communication between robots is done with neglected time delay
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90
3
2
1
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
Time[s]
F
1
i

[
N
]

i
=
1
,
,
3
F
11
F
22
F
33
Fig. 11. Torque inputs F
1i
.
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90
2
1.5
1
0.5
0
0.5
1
1.5
Time[s]
F
2
i

[
N
]

i
=
1
,
,
3
F
21
F
22
F
23
Fig. 12. Torque inputs F
2i
.
compared to the sampling time set up in the robots micro-controller. Figs. 11 and 12 denote the
control torque inputs applied to the robots. To deal with communication delay, the program into
the micro-controller is slightly modied in such a way that it computes the information received
by the modem with a time delay equal to 1 s. Using LMI numerical solvers of MATLAB, we
verify that below this value of time delay, the matrix in Lemma 3.3 is feasible however it no
longer holds for time delay greater than 1 s. The trajectory to be followed by the centroid of the
formation in case of time delay is a sinusoidal path. Fig. 13 shows the position of the robots at
several times, Figs. 1416 show the formation error states. Figs. 17 and 18 show the coordination
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
2.5
2
1.5
1
0.5
0
0.5
1
1.5
2
2.5
x[m]
y
[
m
]
Robot 1
Robot 2
Robot 3
Fig. 13. Positions of three ETS robots at several times along their trajectories considering the time delay.
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70
0.2
0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1
1.2
1.4
1.6
Time[s]
e
x
i

[
m
]
,

i
=
1
,
,
3
e
x1
e
x2
e
x3
xi
considering the time delay.
errors under time delay and quantization effects on the broadcasted information. As expected
from Lemma 3.3 and Theorem 3.1 objectives in Eq. (8) are achieved.
5. Conclusion
This paper addressed the problem of formation control of multiple mobile robots. The
cooperative controller was designed in such a way that the team of mobile robots assemble in a
desired formation pattern whose centroid is forced to follow a prescribed reference trajectory.
This decentralized cooperative controller was designed and successfully tested in this work and
consists in an application of the backstepping techniques with the aid of graph theory. The
important features of this cooperative controller are: rst it takes into account the quantization
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90
0.5
0.4
0.3
0.2
0.1
0
0.1
0.2
0.3
Time[s]
e
y
i
[
m
]

i
=
1
,
3
e
y1
e
y2
e
y3
yi
considering the time delay.
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90
0.2
0.1
0
0.1
0.2
0.3
0.4
0.5
Time[s]
e
i

[
r
a
d
]
,

i
=
1
,
,
3
e1

e2

e3
Fig. 16. Angular formation error tracking considering the time delay.
and time delay effect of the information exchanged among robots into the network. Second, the
cooperative controller was improved using the NN to handle the uncertainties and nonlinearities
of the robot's model. The stability of the overall cooperative system has been shown through
Lyapunov analysis and small gain theorem. All state signals are shown to be bounded.
Experimental results were presented and showed good performance of the proposed cooperative
controllers in a group of three mobile robots.
Appendix
Close inspection of the closed loop cooperative system shows that the error states of (55)
and the error NN weight estimator form feedback interconnected subsystems with
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
0.7
0.6
0.5
0.4
0.3
0.2
0.1
0
0.1
0.2
0.3
Time[s]
x
i
x
j

i
j

i
=
1
,
,
3
x
1
x
2
x
1
x
3
x
2
x
3
Fig. 17. Coordination error x
i
x
j
with time delay.
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
0.2
0.15
0.1
0.05
0
0.05
0.1
0.15
0.2
0.25
Time[s]
y
i
y
j
,

i

j

i
=
1
,
,
3
y
1
y
2
y
1
y
3
y
2
y
3
Fig. 18. Coordination error y
i
y
j
with time delay.
X
ei
~ p
i
;
ei
;
ei
and
~
W
i

^
W
i
W
n
i
as interacting signals. This motivates the use of the small
gain theorem [47] to show convergence of the state error signals to a neighborhood around zero.
In this regard we proceed like in [6] to establish the ISS property for the cooperative state error
and the error NN weight estimator. As a rst step, we show that the state error of the cooperative
system is ISS with respect to the NN weight estimator
~
W
i
and the error approximator
i
. To this
end, we consider again the Lyapunov function candidate V
n
3
V
2
1
2
n
i 1
ei
M
i
ei
, whose
time derivative along the solutions of (62) gives the following:
_
V
n
3
V
1

n
i 1
k
2
ei

n
i 1
ei
K
ei

n
i 1
ei
B
i
~
W
i
S
i
Z
i

n
i 1
ei
B
i
i
Z
i
V
1

n
i 1
k
2
ei

n
i 1
k
i
j
ei
j
2

n
i 1
s
n
i
:B
i
::
~
W
i
:j
ei
j
n
i 1
:B
i
:j
i
Z
i
:
ei
j
n
V
3

n
i 1
3s
n2
i

~
W
i
2
4k
i

n
i 1
3B
i
2
4k
i
j
i
Z
i
j
2
where we have used the following inequalities:
i
3
j
ei
j
2
s
n
i
:
~
W
i
:j ~
ei
j
3s
n2
i

~
W
i
2
4k
i
3
j
ei
j
2
:B
i
:j
i
Z
i
j
ei
j
3B
i
2
4k
i
j
i
Z
i
j
2
and we dened
n
min ; min
i 1;2;;n
2k
i
; min
i 1;2;;n
2k
i
3
min
M
i
_ _ _ _
Rewriting the last inequality of (63) in terms of the state X
ei
, we obtain
_
V
n
3
n
min

min
L
2
;
1
2
; min
i 1;;n
min
M
i
2
_ _
..
c
n
n
i 1
jX
ei
j
2

n
i 1
3s
n2
i

~
W
i
2
4k
i

n
i 1
3B
i
2
4k
i
j
i
Z
i
j
2
c
2
n
n
i 1
jX
ei
j
2
c
2
n
n
i 1
jX
ei
j
2

n
i 1
3s
n2
i

~
W
i
2
4k
i

n
i 1
3B
i
2
4k
i
j
i
Z
i
j
2
_ _
c
2
n
X
e
c
2
n
X
e
3s
n2
4 min
i 1;;n
k
~
W
2
3s
n2
B
n
4 min
i 1;;n
k
2
_ _
63
where s
n
max
i 1;;n
s
n
i
and B
n
max
i 1;;n
:B
i
:. This implies that, if :X
e
: is chosen such
that the following inequality holds:
:X
e
:4
3
p
s
n
2c
n
min
i 1;;n
k
i
_ :
~
W:
3
p
s
n
B
n
2c
n
min
i 1;;n
k
i
_ :: 64
then the time derivative of the Lyapunov function V
3
is guaranteed to be negative. Following the
notion of input to state stability [6], the cooperative state errors of the rst three equations of Eq.
(62) are input-to-state stable, with gain functions
~
W
r
3
p
s
n
2c
n
min
i 1;;n
k
i
_ r
3
p
s
n
B
n
2c
n
; min
i 1;;n
k
i
_ r
Next step will be to show that the neural weight estimation subsystem is input-to-state stable with
~
W as state and X
e
; W
n
as inputs. Consider the following Lyapunov candidate function:
V
NN

1
2

n
i 1
~
W
i

1
i
~
W
i
65
whose time derivative along the solutions of the last equation of Eq. (62) satises
_
V
NN

n
i 1
~
W
i

1
i
_
~
W
i

n
i 1
~
W
i
S
i
Z
i
ei
s
i
~
W
i
s
i
W
n
i

n
i 1
~
W
i
1s
i
~
W
i
s
i
~
W
i
S
i
Z
i
e
s
i
W
n
i

1
~
W
~
W
~
W SZ
ei
W
n
1
min
~
W
2
66
if we choose :
~
W::W
n
:= s
n
j
e
:
min
, where 0oo1 and diags
1
; ; s
n
.
Thus the subsystem of the neural weight estimation is ISS with respect to inputs
e
; W
n
. Since
the vector input
e
is a component of the vector X
e
, it will be easy to conclude that the
subsystem of the neural weight estimation is ISS with respect to inputs X
e
; W
n
with gain
functions
W
n
r;
X
e
s
n
min
min
r
where
n
is a matrix projection such that
n
X
e

e
. Having obtained the ISS propriety for both
subsystems (the cooperative and the neural weight estimation subsystems), by checking the
following condition:
X
e
~
W
or
which by selecting c
n
min
i 1;;n
k
i
results in
c
n
4
3
p

min
n
s
n2
2
p

min
allows to conclude using the small gain theorem [47] that all signals of (62) are bounded.
In particular we have
lim
t-
sup:~ e
i
~ e
j
:maxf
::;
~
W
W
n
:W
n
:g
max
3
p
s
n
B
n
2c
n
min
i 1;;n
k
i
_ ::;
3
p
s
n

2c
n
min
i 1;;n
k
i
_ :W
n
:
_ _
67
which means that the cooperative state error ~ e
i
~ e
j
is bounded and converges to a neighborhood
around the origin which meets the objectives in (8). Thus the theorem follows.
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Robust formation control without velocity measurement
of the leader robot
J. Ghommam
a,n
, H. Mehrjerdi
b
, M. Saad
b
a
Control & Energy Management, The National School of Engineering at Sfax, Tunisia
b
Dpartement de gnie lectrique cole de technologie suprieure 1100, rue Notre-Dame Ouest Montral, Qubec, Canada
Article history:
Received 9 July 2012
Accepted 6 April 2013
Keywords:
Leaderfollower
Nonholonomic mobile robot
Formation control
Virtual vehicle
Neural network
Backstepping technique
a b s t r a c t
In this paper a control problem of leaderfollower motion coordination of multiple nonholonomic mobile
robots is addressed and subsequently in the proposed scheme, a reference trajectory generated based on
the information from the leader is tracked by the follower robots. To alleviate demanded information on
the leader, specically to eliminate the measurement requirement or estimation of the leader's velocity
and dynamics, a virtual vehicle is constructed whereby its trajectory converges to the reference trajectory
of the follower. Trajectory tracking controller is then designed to allow the follower robot to track the
virtual vehicle using neural network approximation, in combination with the backstepping and Lyapunov
direct design technique and nally the performance and effectiveness of the controller is veried
throughout the experiments.
& 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
The coordination control of vehicles has recently attracted the
interest of researchers. There are different applications for groups of
cooperating vehicles such as search and rescue (Whelan & Evans,
1997), surveillance (Kingston, Holt, Beard, McLain, & Casbeer, 2005),
monitoring forest re (Beard, McLain, Li, & Mehra, 2005) and
volcanic activities, and other tasks that may be dangerous or
repetitive for humans. The theory of designing control and coordi-
nation algorithms to realize the formation, especially for a team of
vehicles working in known or unknown environments, is exciting in
addition to the interest by the robotics community in applications
for vehicle group (Balch & Arkin, 1998; Kladis, Menon, & Edwards,
2011a Kladis, Menon, & Edwards, 2011b; Menon & Edwards, 2009).
According to the survey presented by Scharf, Hadaegh, and Ploen
(2004), and the references therein, formation structure can be
divided into three strategies: the leaderfollower strategy (Chen,
Sun, Yang, & Chen, 2009; Desai, Ostrowski, & Kumar, 1998; Gu &
Wang, 2009; Shao, Xie, & Wang, 2007; Vidal, Shakernia, & Sastry,
2003), the behavioral (Balch & Arkin, 1998; Brooks, 1986), and the
virtual structure approaches (Egerstedt, Abubakr, & Hu, 2001; Lewis
& Tan, 1997).
The purpose of this paper as opposed to Desai et al. (1998) and
Das, Fierro, Vijay Kumar, Ostrowski, and John (2002) is the use of
unconventional leaderfollower approach in which the velocity of
the leader is no longer considered as an external input for the
follower controller. The control philosophy in Desai et al. (1998)
and Das et al. (2002) makes use of the feedback linearization to
exponentially stabilize the relative distance and orientation of the
followers. Recently Dongbing and Huosheng (2009) proposed a
model predictive control based on the l and ll schemes. The
control design relies on optimizing certain performance index
subject to some nonholonomic constraints exhibited by the
formation scheme. To ensure the stability of the proposed design,
the authors added a state penalty to the performance index and
terminal region to the nonholonomic constraints. In Shao et al.
(2007), three-level hybrid control architecture is implemented
both in centralized and decentralized cooperative control based
on a leader-following approach. In Dierks and Jagannathan
(2009a), an asymptotically stable combined kinematic/torque
control law is developed for leaderfollower-based formation
control using backstepping to contain the complete dynamics of
the robots and the formation. The authors introduce a neural
network, along with robust integral of the sign of the error
feedback, to approximate the dynamics of the follower, as well
as its leader using online weight tuning. Lyapunov method is
used to prove the stability of the formation in the presence of
obstacles.
In the aforementioned works, the controller designed for
follower robots explicitly depends on the velocity measurement
of the leader vehicle. However, in most situations only the
Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/conengprac
Control Engineering Practice
0967-0661/$ - see front matter & 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.conengprac.2013.04.004
n
Corresponding author. Tel.: +216 26 269 813.
E-mail addresses: jghommam@gmail.com (J. Ghommam),
hasan.mehrjerdi.1@ens.etsmtl.ca (H. Mehrjerdi).
URL: http://etsmtl.ca/Professeurs/msaad (M. Saad).
Control Engineering Practice 21 (2013) 11431156
reference trajectory in terms of the leader position information is
needed for the followers to locate themselves in the formation
team. For such reasons, some work dealing with this problem has
been proposed. In Fahimi (2007) a model-based sliding mode
approach for leaderfollower formation control is considered for
multiple autonomous underactuated vehicles. To be able to
address the uncertainties in the dynamic model of the vessels,
the author introduced a virtual disturbance-free leader whose
trajectory is known by all followers of the group. A sliding mode
controller is then proposed to make the vessels track the virtual
reference with a desired offset. Similar work using the sliding
mode technique has been applied to the cooperative movement of
multiple mobile robots (Defoort, Floquet, Kokosy, & Perruquetti,
2008). In this work, the authors considered the leaderfollower
approach using rst and second order sliding-mode controllers for
asymptotically stabilizing the vehicles to a time varying desired
formation. The particularity of this controller is that the velocity
measurement of the leader is not needed in the control design.
Besides, it ensures that no robots collide with one another at the
beginning of the formation.
These control algorithms are originally designed to synchronize
the movement of a mobile robots team, often use complex
mathematical tools and nonlinear methods, therefore making
them sensitive to an unknown environment. Besides, in most of
these works, the leaderfollower control objectives are mostly
kinematic models, and the dynamics are often neglected. With the
exception of the work of Dierks and Jagannathan (2009a, 2009b)
and Park, Park, and Choi (2011), the dynamic of the followers
robots is fully considered. However, the controller for the follower
robots still depends on the dynamics of the leader. In addition, to
the best knowledge of the authors, only simulation results are
obtained, without any real time implementation.
Inspired by the developments in the eld, this paper tackles the
leaderfollower control problem that takes root in the work
reported in Das et al. (2002) for the l and ll scheme for the
leaderfollower approach and the virtual vehicle approach in
Kyrkjebo and Pettersen (2006). Specically, a solution to the
formation control problem for a group of nonholonomic mobile
robots is proposed as little knowledge as possible on the global
leader of the formation. The only information provided from the
leader vehicle is its position/heading measurement. This is desir-
able to considerably reduce the overall communication load
among an important number of robots within the formation. The
approach that we propose here precludes the necessity to con-
struct an observer to estimate the leader's velocity. The relevant
feature of the control design is that the controller is not based on
feedback linearization as the one adopted in Das et al. (2002) and
thus relies on a ltering technique as developed in Purwar, Kar,
and Jha (2008) that generates pseudo-ltered tracking error
signals to provide sufcient knowledge about the leader's velocity
measurement. The control design is performed in two different
steps: (i) A virtual vehicle is designed on the basis of the lter
technique to track the reference trajectory of the follower in
accordance with its conguration in the formation. (ii) From
practical perspective, model uncertainties of the follower robots
are considered. A concise adaptive neural network (NN-based)
control scheme is proposed using backstepping and feedforward
approximations. An alternative method however, could be to use
the self-organizing radial basis function (SORBF) neural network
(e.g., Honggui, Junfei, & Qili, 2012; Junfei & Honggui, 2012) in
which the performance in terms of identication process of
parameters and model uncertainties is greatly improved through
an optimization algorithm. The outstanding advantage of using the
adaptive NN-based control scheme over the standard adaptive
control approach is that in the adaptive NN approach, the mild
assumptions on the model's parametric linearities as well as the
computation of the regression matrix as required in the traditional
adaptive scheme are avoided. These reasons justify the use of the
adaptive NN-based control to compensate for functional uncer-
tainties and unknown disturbances in the follower robots'
dynamics.
This paper contributes three main folds which can be summar-
ized as follows:
(i) Based on the framework developed for leaderfollower for-
mation control strategy, which considers separationsepara-
tion and separation-bearing approaches between leaders and
followers. The inputoutput feedback linearization proposed
in Das et al. (2002) is modied by using a lter technique,
similar to the one in Kyrkjebo and Pettersen (2006) to provide
sufcient knowledge about the velocity of the leader. The
closed loop system is proven to be uniformly practically
asymptotically stable, meaning that the output of the lter
asymptotically converges to a ball around the true leader's
velocity value, which can be made arbitrarily small by
adjusting the control gains.
(ii) Full uncertain dynamics of the follower mobile robots under
slow time-varying disturbances induced by the wheel slip-
page on the ground are considered for the tracking control
problem. An adaptive trajectory tracking controller for the
follower based on the estimation of the leader's velocity and a
RBF-NN compensation technique that learns the difference
between the nominal and the actual robot dynamics is
derived. Rigorous stability analysis via Lyapunov synthesis
are carried out which shows that the uniform ultimate
boundedness of the closed loop signals can be guaranteed.
(iii) In light of the previous result for the leaderfollower con-
troller, combining both strategies (i.e. ll and l techniques),
the stability analysis is considered for a general number N42
of vehicles forming a geometric formation pattern. The overall
closed loop system error is proven to converge to a bounded
compact set.
The paper is organized as follows: Section 2 shows the nota-
tions used and gives fundamental notions about stability used
throughout the paper. Section 3 presents the kinematics and
dynamics modeling of robots along with the problem formulation
of this work. Section 4 describes the virtual vehicle design. Section
5 presents the application of the backstepping procedure with the
NN design to control the follower robot to track the virtual vehicle.
Section 6 extends the concept of controlling a pair of leader
follower vehicles to a formation of N vehicles. Experimental results
are given in Section 7. Finally, we conclude the paper in Section IX.
2. Preliminaries
For the convenience of the reader, the notation used and some
necessary practical denitions about stability in the subsequent
design are briey introduced.
2.1. Notations
The subscript

denotes the transposition of a vector or a
matrix. R denotes the set of real values and R
n
is the n-dimen-
sional Euclidean space. For a matrix A, denote
min
A and
max
A
their smallest and largest eigenvalues, respectively. The notation
j j denotes the absolute value of a real variable and refers to
the Euclidean norm of a vector or the induced norm of a matrix.
However,
F
denotes the Frobenius norm which for a matrix A,
it is dened as A
F

trfA
Ag
p
, with tr being the trace of the
matrix A.
J. Ghommam et al. / Control Engineering Practice 21 (2013) 11431156 1144
2.2. Denitions
Denition 2.1 (Kyrkjebo and Pettersen, 2006). Uniform semiglob-
ally practical asymptotic stability (USPAS): Given a nonlinear time-
varying parameterized system of the form
_
f t; ; 1
where t is the time variable, R
n
is a piecewise continuous state
variable and R
m
is a constant parameter vector, the function f :
R
0
R
n
R
m
-R
n
is locally lipschitz in and piecewise contin-
uous in t for all R
m
.
Let R
m
be a set of parameters. The system (1) is said to be
Uniformly Semiglobally Practically Asymptotically Stable on if
for any positive 440, there exists
n
such that B
is
Uniformly Asymptotically Stable (UAS) on B
for the system

_
f
t; ;
n
, where B
fR
n
: jj g and B
fR
n
: jj g.
Denition 2.2 (Khalil, 2002). Uniform ultimate boundedness
(UUB): The solutions of (1) are said to be uniformly ultimately
bounded if there exist positive constants and , independent of
the initial condition t
0
0, and for every a0; , there is a time t
f
0
independent of t
0
such that: If t
0
a, then t , for all
tt
0
t
f
.
3. Dynamical model and problem formulation
In this section, the motion and dynamic description of the car-
like mobile robot proposed by Fukao, Nakagawa, and Adachi
(2000) is reviewed. The problem statement for the leaderfollower
formation approach is provided thereafter.
3.1. Mobile robot modeling
We suppose that the group of followers in the formation each
has the following dynamics:
_
i
J
i
i
M
i
_
i
C
i
_
i
i
D
i
i

di
F
i
di
2
where
i
x
i
; y
i
;
i

i
; y
i
, and the heading
i
of the robot i in the earth xed frame OXY,
i

1i
;
2i
, with
1i
and
2i
being the robot's wheels' angular velocities, F
i
F
1i
; F
2i
with F
1i
and F
2i
being the control torques applied to the wheels of
the robot i.
di
is considered as a disturbance vector and is generally
a function of the robot's physical parameters. Where the rotation
matrix
J
i
i

r
i
2
"
cos
i
sin
i
b
1
i
cos
i
sin
i
b
1
i
#
;
the mass matrix
M
i

m
11i
m
12i
m
12i
m
11i
" #
;
the Coriolis matrix
C
i
_
i

0 c
i
_
i
c
i
_
i
0
" #
;
and the damping matrix
D
i

d
11i
0
0 d
22i
" #
:
with d
jji
; j 1; 2 being the damping coefcients and c
i
1=2b
i
r
2
i
m
c
i
a
i
; where a
i
is the distance from the origin x
i
; y
i
to the center
of mass of the mobile robot, b
i
and r
i
are the physical parameters of
the mobile robot. For convenience, we transform the angular wheel
velocities vector
i
for robot i into a vector containing its linear and
angular velocity (v
i
, and
i
respectively) as follows:
i
B
1
i

i
; B
i

1
r
i
1 b
i
1 b
i
" #
3
where
i
v
i
;
i
. It is worth noticing that the matrix B

i
is non-
singular since detB
i
2b
i
=r
i
.
Expressing the kinematic and dynamic equations of the mobile
robot in terms of the transformed velocity
i
using (3), the robot
dynamics (2) reduces to the following form:
_ x
i
v
i
cos
i
_ y
i
v
i
sin
i
_
i

i
M
i
_
i
C
i
_
i
i
D
i
i
B
i
F
i
B
i
di
4
where
M
i
B
1
i
M
i
B
i
; C
i
_
i
B
1
i
C
i
_
i
B
i
D
i
B
1
i
D
i
B
i
; B
i
B
1
i
5
and
i
v
i
;
i
, p
i
x
i
; y
i
;
i

i
; y
i
, and
the heading
i
of the robot i in the earth xed frame OXY. M
i
; C
i
and D
i
are the modied inertia, Coriolis and Damping matrices
respectively.
Remark 3.1. The angular velocities
1i
and
2i
are obtained by
tachometry measurement, therefore the transformed velocities
v
i
;
i
are available at each time for the control design.
Assumption 3.1. In this paper, a challenging problem is addressed
by treating the values of M
i
; C _
i
; D
i
and
di
as completely
unknown. Moreover, it is assumed that the disturbance term
di
B
i
di
is bounded as
di
d
M
6
where d
M
R is the positive constant scalar.
Assumption 3.2. In the group team of mobile robots, each of the
robot can be considered a leader for some set of mobile robots. We
assume for practical reasons that the bound on the velocity of each
leader mobile robot is given by
sup
t
u
l
V
L
; V
L
40 7
which means that for all time tR the linear velocity of the leader
vehicle is bounded i.e. jv
i
j v
M
and its angular velocity is also
bounded i.e. j
i
j
M
.
3.2. Leaderfollower problem formulation
The leaderfollower control problem can be formulated in two
different modes: The rst mode known as l control problem
where the formation is built upon the knowledge of a separation
distance and relative bearing between two robots in the group
(see Fig. 2). Whereas in the ll control problem, a third robot is
added in the l scheme in which the formation is specied by
three different separation distances between the robots and two
relative bearings between the leader and the follower robots (see
Fig. 3). In this paper, the leaderfollower problem is formulated
along the line of Cuia, Ge, How, and Choob (2010) and Kyrkjebo
and Pettersen (2006) with a slight modication: The reference
trajectory for the follower R
r
is generated using a copy of the
leader's trajectory R
L
shifted a certain distance from the leader
(see Fig. 1). Assume that a virtual vehicle henceforth designated by
R
V
tries to cruise along this generated trajectory, then this virtual
vehicle is separated a distance l
lk
from the leader with a relative
bearing angle
lk
with respect to the leader (see Fig. 2). We
suppose that the only information sent by the leader to the
followers is the position/heading of the vehicle. We propose to
design a controller for the virtual vehicle based on its velocity
vector. By doing so, we ensure convergence of the virtual vehicle
to the reference trajectory. Through the use of this intermediate
controlled virtual vehicle, we implicitly reconstructed an estimate
of the leader's velocity. Controlling the real physical follower to
track the phantom vehicle would be easier using the complete
information about its position/heading and velocity.
4. Virtual vehicle design
In this section, we will describe the relationship between the
formation's main leader and the cascades of several other pairs of
leaderfollower vehicles as well as their organization in the
formation scheme.
4.1. Leaderfollower scheme
Hierarchical high level formation can be realized by consider-
ing the team of n vehicles as a set of n1 decentralized subsystems
of two vehicles and one main leader. As in Das et al. (2002), we
model the underlying topology among the group of n1 mobile
robots as a directed graph, where the ith node represents the ith
robot R
i
and a directed edge from robot R
i
to robot R
j
denotes the
ow of information exchange between robot R
i
and R
j
. For the
leaderfollower formation scheme considered hereafter, the for-
mation graph can be viewed as a direct tree with the main leader
of the formation R
L
as a head of the tree.
Without loss of generality, two basic leaderfollower cong-
urations can be considered in this work, namely the l and ll
leaderfollower schemes of Das et al. (2002). We propose to derive
a unied kinematic controller which will help the follower
vehicles to reach their positions with respect to the formation
scheme. For simplicity's sake, we will consider only the l
formation scheme.
l scheme: In the ideal case, the virtual robot k will follow the
reference vehicle placed at a distance l
lk
from the leader l. Let
l
lk
R
40
denote the relative distance between the reference vehicle
and the leader and is given as
l
lk

x
l
x
k
d cos
k
2
y
l
y
k
d sin
k
2
q
8
where d is the distance between the middle point of the rear axle
and the center of gravity of the robot as shown in Fig. 2. The
relative bearing
lk
is dened as
lk

lk
l
9
with
lk
arctany
l
y
k
d sin
k
=x
l
x
k
d cos
k
. Take the time
derivative of equations (8) and (14) and let e
lk
l
lk
;
lk
, the
kinematic equations of the two robots are given by Das et al.
(2002)
_
e
lk
Hu
k
Gu
l
_
lk

l
k
10
where u
k
v
k
;
k
is the input for the virtual robot k and

u
l
v
l
;
l
is the input for the leader robot l. The angle

lk
is
dened as the sum of the bearing angle and the difference
between the robot's heading, i.e.
lk

lk

l
H
cos
lk
d sin
lk
sin
lk
l
lk
d cos
lk
l
lk
" #
11
and
G
cos
lk
0
sin
lk
l
lk
1
" #
12
The last term of Eq. (10) represents the internal dynamics of the
leaderfollower robots' system.
Fig. 2. l formation scheme.
Fig. 3. ll formation scheme.
Fig. 1. Leaderfollower formation process.
ll scheme: In this formation control model, a third virtual robot
is considered. The formation pattern is now dened by two
relative bearings
lk
;
lj
and two separating distances l
lk
and l
lj
as
shown in Fig. 3. Similar to the l scheme, the relative distances is
dened between the reference vehicle and the main leader as
l
lk

x
l
x
k
d cos
k
2
y
l
y
k
d sin
k
2
q
l
lj

x
l
x
j
d cos
j
2
y
l
y
j
d sin
j
2
q
13
and the relative bearing angles as
lk

lk
l
;
lj

lj
j
14
The formation state errors are dened by e
lk
l
lk
;
lk
; l
lj
;
lj
, the
speed control signals u
kj
v
k
;
k
; v
j
;
j
and the kinematic equa-

tions for the three robots are given by
_
e
lk

~
Hu
kj

~
Gu
l
_
k

k
;
_
j

j
15
where
~
H
cos
lk
d sin
lk
0 0
sin
lk
l
lk
d cos
lk
l
lk
0 0
0 0 cos
lj
d sin
lj
cos
kj
0 cos
kj
d sin
kj
2
6
6
6
6
4
3
7
7
7
7
5
16
and
~
G
cos
lk
0
sin
lk
l
lk
1
cos
lj
0
0 0
2
6
6
6
6
4
3
7
7
7
7
5
17
Remark 4.1. The control objective for the virtual vehicles, either
in the l or in ll formation scheme, is commonly the same, as it
consists in designing the controllers (u
k
or u
kj
respectively),
acquiring only the position measurement from the leader to track
their reference trajectories dened with respect to the desired
distances and without the need to use the leader's velocity u
l
.
4.2. Control design for the virtual vehicle
The key idea behind designing a control law u
k
for the new
kinematic equations (10) is to stabilize the vector state e
lk
to a
desired output. A leaderfollower control law was proposed in Das
et al. (2002) based on inputoutput feedback linearization techni-
que. However, the controller derived in Das et al. (2002) is based
on the knowledge of the velocity measurement of the leader. In
this paper, we consider the velocity u
k
of the virtual vehicle as
control input and will design it in such a way that it depends only
on the measurement of the leader's position and ensures that the
virtual vehicle tracks the leader's reference trajectory. To design
the control input for the virtual leader, we generate a pseudo-
ltered tracking error signal (Purwar et al., 2008), which will
eliminate the need for velocity measurement to be included in the
control design. To achieve the control objective, dene the error
variable r
elk

~
e
lk

l
with
~
e
lk
e
lk
e
d
l
, e
d
l
being the desired
distance/bearing of the reference vehicle with respect to the
leader,
l

1l
;
2l
is the output of the following lter given

by the following implementable equations:
r
elk

~
e
lk

l
_
l
t
l
Kr
elk
l
0 0 18
the gain matrices of the lter (18) are assumed to have the form
diag and K diagk where and k are the positive scalar
constants. The lter (18) generates a velocity related signal from
the error track. Let the virtual velocity control input for the virtual
vehicle be designed as
u
k
H
1
_
e
d
l
~
e
lk

l
K 19
where diag, 40 is a feedback gain matrix and the last term
in (19) is dened as tanh
1l
; tanh
2l
. Taking the time

derivative of r
elk
and using the virtual control u
k
we obtain
_
r
elk
Kr
elk
KGu
l
20
Notice from the denition of the matrix G, its induced norm is
always bounded, since l
lk
which denes the relative distance
between the leader and the reference vehicle dened by the user
could neither be zero, nor unbounded. Clearly the solutions of Eq.
(20) are bounded since the last term Gu
l
is bounded. The stability
analysis is stated in the following theorem:
Theorem 4.1. Consider the lter dynamic described by (18) and (20).
Let the bound on the leader's velocity be dened as in Assumption 3.3
by (7). Applying the control input (19) for the virtual vehicle, then for
any bounded initial conditions, the output states ~ e
lk
;
l
and r
elk
are
uniformly semiglobally practically asymptotically stable USPAS.
Moreover, we can show the internal dynamics of the leaderfollower
robot formation (i.e. last equation of (10)) to be also USPAS as long as
the initial relative heading is bounded away from 7.
Proof. Similar to Cuia et al. (2010), we consider the following
positive denite Lyapunov function:
V
lk
t
1
2
r
elk
r
elk

ln cosh
1l
ln cosh
2l
p
" #
ln cosh
1l
ln cosh
2l
p
" #
21
with diag being a positive gain matrix. Note that V
lk
(t) is
positive denite and upper bounded by a positive increasing func-
tion. More precisely, using the following inequality ln coshx x
2
,
it can be veried that V
lk
f r
elk
;
l
, where f r
elk
;
l
is a class
K-function such that f r
elk
;
l

1
2
r
elk
2
. Taking the deriva-
tive of (21) along the solutions of (18) and (20) yields
_
V
lk
r
elk
Kr
elk
Kr
elk
r
elk
Gu
l
l
Kr
elk
elk
Kr
elk
l
r
elk
Gu
l

min
K
3V
L
G
2r
elk
!
r
elk
l
22
where we have used d=dtln coshxt _ xt tanhxt and the
fact that r
elk
Gu
l
3
2
V
L
Gr
elk
3V
L
G=2r
elk
r
elk
2
. Let be any
given positive constant, we choose the gain
min
K
3V
L
G
2
40 23
we obtain for r
elk
2
4
2
_
V
lk
r
elk
l
. Since x tanhx is a
positive denite function for all xR
n
, it is straightforward to
conclude that
_
V
lk
is negative denite. However due to the linear
dependency of 1= in
_
V
lk
, we conclude that the solutions of the
closed loop system (20) are uniformly practical asymptotically stable,
which consequently implies from the lter equation (18) that
l
is
also USPAS and by construction we have that the output state of the
leaderfollower formation ~ e
lk
is USPAS. To complete the stability
analysis, the stability of the internal dynamic of the leaderfollower
formation is considered. The internal dynamic is easily obtained from
Eq. (10), the expression of
k
is an element of the vector u
k
,
substituted into the last equation of (10) which gives the following:
_ e

v
k
d
sin e

k
;
_
l
lk
; _
lk
; e
24

k
1
l
lk
d
cos e

lk
1
d
_
l
lk
sine

lk
_
lk
sine

lk
25
where e
k
. To study the stability of the internal dynamic (24),
the following positive denite Lyapunov function candidate
V
e

1
2
e
2
is considered. Its time derivative along the solutions of

(24), inserting the control (19) into (10) gives
_
V
e

v
k
d
e
sin e
1
~ e
lk
;
l
; e
l
; _ e
d
l
; u
l
; e
26
where
1
and
2
are dened as below, respectively
1

1
d
~ e
1
lk

1l
k tanh
1l
sin~ e
~ e
2
lk

2l
k tanh
2l
cos ~ e
2

k
1
l
lk
d
cos ~ e
1
d
_ e
d
1l
G
1
u
l
sin ~ e
_ e
d
2l
G
2
u
l
sin ~ e
27
where ~ e

lk
and we have dened
~
e
lk
~ e
1
lk
; ~ e
2
lk
, and G
1
; G
2
are the upper and the bottom row vectors, respectively, of the matrix
G. Using the bound on the robot's velocity from Assumption 3.2, it is
easy to nd a constant term
2
with upper bound
2
. Making use of
the relation jabj =2a
2
1=2b
2
for any real a; b and for all
positive , it follows that for any positive constant we have
_
V
e
v
k
d
e
sin e
23
d

3
2k
d

0
B
B
@
1
C
C
A
e
j
2
d

l
2
28
since the leader linear velocity is positive and je
j , USPAS is
ensured provided that we design the gain matrices such that the
following inequalities hold:
min
K
3V
L
G
2jj
29
23d
3
2k
d

30
31
This concludes the proof.
Remark 4.2. At this stage, we ensured that the virtual vehicle
converges to a reference trajectory dened relative to the leader
vehicle using measurements of the available signals like the
position and heading. The virtual vehicle therefore becomes
dened by its position/heading p
k
;
k
and by the measurement
of its velocity u
k
which was implicitly estimated from the leader's
velocity. These signals are exploited later to track the position of a
virtual leader with a real physical mobile robot.
5. Position tracking of the follower robot
As discussed earlier, the formation control objective is realized
only if the follower physical robot reaches its desired position with
respect to the leader. Since the velocity of the leader is unavailable
for design control, a virtual mobile robot is controlled such that it
converges to the dened reference trajectory by eliminating the
need for this velocity. The formation is therefore achieved only if
the physical follower robot tracks the virtual mobile robot's
position. The kinematic of the virtual vehicle is given by
_ x
k
v
k
cos
k
; _ y
k
v
k
sin
k
;
_
k

k
32
The control objective for the position tracking under Assumption
3.1 is to design a control input F
i
and update law for the uncertain
parameters of the follower robot denoted by the number i, to
ensure if it converges to a neighborhood near its desired location
in the formation. That is to approximately track the virtual
vehicle's position that we denote by p
k
x
k
; y
k
and heading
k
.
In other words, the control objectives aim at designing a control
input for the dynamics in (4) such that the tracking errors between
the position states of the follower robot and the virtual vehicle are
uniformly ultimately bounded.
A close look at the dynamic system (4) shows that this system
is of a strict feedback form to which direct Lyapunov method and
backstepping technique can be applied to design the control input
F
i
. The control design is split in a two stage strategy. By the rst
stage of the design, the kinematic equations of the mobile robot i
are considered with v
i
and
i
being the immediate controls to
regulate the position of the actual robot at the virtual vehicle
position. By the second stage, the dynamic equation of the
follower robot is considered to design the control input F
i
while
taking into account the model uncertainties and external
disturbances.
5.1. Stage 1: kinematic design
The kinematic controller of the mobile robot is responsible for
the task of position tracking of the follower robot. To derive the
kinematic controller, two steps of the backstepping technique are
used to full the position tracking. In the rst step, the heading
i
and the linear velocity v
i
of the mobile robot i are used as controls
to perform the position tracking control problem. In the second
step, the angular velocity
i
is used to ensure that the error
between the actual angular velocity and its immediate value
stabilizes at the origin.
Inspired by the work of Do (2009), we dene the following
error variables:
v
ei
v
i
vi
;
ei

i
i
33
where
vi
and
i
are the virtual controls to be determined later.
The three rst equations of (4) in terms of the new error variables
are re-written as
_
p
i
u
i

1i

2i
34
where u
i

i
vi
,
2i

i
v
ei
, with cos ; sin
and
1i
is given as in (39).
From the denition of u
i
, it would be easy to determine the
immediate control
i
and
vi
from the knowledge of the expres-
sion of u
i
. The following Lyapunov function will allow the design of
the virtual control u
i
in order to full the task of position tracking:
V
1i

1
2
p
i
p
k
2
35
The derivative along the solutions of (34) gives
_
V
1i
p
i
p
k
u
i

1i

2i
_
p
k
36
the velocity
_
p
k
of the virtual robot is known for the design. We can
design a bounded virtual control for u
i
as follows:
u
i
k
i
V
L
p
i
p
k
1 p
i
p
k
2
p
_
p
k
37
where k
i
is a positive constant chosen such that
k
i
4
v
min
k
2V
L
38
where v
min
k
is the minimumvelocity of the virtual vehicle such that
_
p
k
4v
min
k
. We need to solve for
i
and
vi
from the denition of
u
i
and its expression in (37). The expressions for
i
and
vi
are
given in (40) and (41). Note that the expression in (40) is well
dened since for the term k
i
V
L
x
i
x
k
cos
k
k
i
V
L
y
i
y
k
sin
k
v
k
1 p
i
p
k
2
p
0, the condition (38) on the constant
gain k
i
is satised. Substituting the virtual control (37) in (36) and
(34), the time derivative of the Lyapunov function (36) and the
rst closed loop subsystem are rewritten as
1i

cos
ei
1 cos
i
sin
ei
sin
i
sin
ei
cos
i
cos
ei
1 sin
i
" #
vi
39
i

k
arctan
k
i
V
L
x
i
x
k
sin
k
k
i
V
L
y
i
y
k
cos
k
k
i
V
L
x
i
x
k
cos
k
k
i
V
L
y
i
y
k
sin
k
v
k
1 p
i
p
k
2
p
!
40
vi
k
i
V
L
x
i
x
k
1 p
i
p
k
2
p cos
i
k
i
V
L
y
i
y
k
1 p
i
p
k
2
p
sin
i
v
k
cos
k
i
41
_
V
1i
k
i
V
l
p
i
p
k
1 p
i
p
k
2
p p
i
p
k
1i
p
i
p
k
2i
42
_
p
i
k
i
V
L
p
i
p
k
1 p
i
p
k
2
p
1i

2i

_
p
k
43
Clearly if the second term of (42) is set to zero, we would conclude
about the asymptotic stability of the error position tracking. The
next steps consist of canceling those terms in order to conclude
about the stability of the closed loop system. The nal step in the
rst stage of the design consists in using the angular velocity
i
as
an immediate control to stabilize the error between the actual
heading of the vehicle and its immediate value. Note that if the
error position tracking is zero (i.e. x
i
x
k
0 and y
i
y
k
0) then
from (40), the heading of the follower vehicle will ultimately
converge to the heading of the virtual vehicle (i.e.
k
).
We now consider
i
as an immediate control to stabilize
ei
,
then the error variable is dened
ei

i
i
44
where
i
is a virtual control of
i
. To determine this virtual
control, we propose the following Lyapunov function candidate
V
2i
V
1i

1
2
2
ei
45
which derivative along the solutions of (36) and the third equation
of (4) would allow to choose
i
to cancel the rst cross product
term p
i
p
k
1i
in (36) as follows:
i
k
ei
ei

i
p
k
v
k
i
v
k
_ v
k
p
i
p
k
1i
ei
i
p
i
u
i

1i
46
with this choice, the time derivative of the Lyapunov function (45)
and the angle error tracking dynamics are given by
_
V
2i
k
i
V
L
p
i
p
k
1 p
i
p
k
2
p k
ei
2
ei
p
i
p
k
ei
i
p
i

i
;
ei
!
ei
47
_
ei
k
ei
ei

ei
p
i
p
k
1i
ei
i
p
i
2i
48
where
ei
v
ei
;
ei
. Note that the term

1i
=
ei
is well dened,
since the ratio expressions that involve trigonometric terms verify
that lim
ei
-0
sin
ei
=
ei
1 and lim
ei
-0
cos
ei
1=
ei
0. The
next step in the backstepping technique concerns the last stage of
the design which is the dynamic part of the follower robot.
Obviously in the second stage, the last term in (48) will be
canceled by choosing appropriately the control design F
i
.
5.2. Stage 2: dynamic design
5.2.1. Known dynamic with no external perturbations
In this stage, we design the real control input vector F
i
for the
follower robot considering that the robot's parameters model are
known and there is no external perturbation forces. An extended
version taking into account all the kinds of uncertainties will be
treated later on in this paper.
Before proceeding to the design of the control input, we re-
write the dynamic of the robot in terms of the error variable
ei
as
follows:
M
i
_
ei
C
i
_
p
i
i
D
i
i
M _
vi
; _
i
B
i
F
i
49
Note from (40) to (41), because
vi
and
i
are functions of the
states of actual robot and the states of the virtual vehicle,
respectively. To determine the control input vector F
i
, we propose
the following Lyapunov function:
V
3i
V
2i

1
2
ei
M
i
ei
50
Differentiating the Lyapunov function (50) along the solutions of
(48) and (49) and choosing F
i
as
F
i
B
1
i
K
ei
ei
C
i
_
p
i
i
D
i
vi
i
!
M
_
vi
_
i
!
p
i
p
k
ei
i
p
i

i
;
ei
" !
51
then using the control input (51) in the time derivative of the
Lyapunov function (50) and substituting it into the dynamic
equation (49), we obtain
_
V
3i
k
i
V
L
p
i
p
k
1 p
i
p
k
2
p k
ei
2
ei
ei
K
ei
D
ei
52
M
i
_
ei
K
ei
D
ei
"
p
i
p
k
ei
i
p
i

i
;
ei
#
53
For convenience of the stability analysis, we rewrite the closed
loop system consisting of (43) and the exact model dynamics (53)
as follows:
_
p
i
k
i
V
L
p
i
p
k
1 p
i
p
k
2
p
1i

2i

_
p
k
_
ei
k
ei
ei

ei
p
i
p
k
1i
ei
i
p
i
2i
M
i
_
ei
K
ei
D
ei
"
p
i
p
k
ei
i
p
i

i
;
ei
#
54
The above design procedure can be summarized in the following
theorem, which contains the results for the tracking feedback
control of the system dynamics without considering parameters,
uncertainties and external disturbances.
Theorem 5.1. Consider the robot dynamics (2), with no external
disturbance forces that directly act on the robot i.e.
di
0. Assume
also that we have exact knowledge of the mobile robot parameters
under Assumption 3.1 and taking the torque input for the mobile
robot according to (51). Then, the states of the closed loop system
(54) are bounded. Moreover, the position tracking errors p
i
p
k
and
k
asymptotically converge to zero.
Proof. The global candidate Lyapunov function for the closed loop
error dynamics (54) is (50) where the time derivative is given by
(52). We can write (52) as follows:
_
V
3i
W
i
55
where
W
i
k
i
V
L
p
i
p
k
1 p
i
p
k
2
p k
ei
2
ei

ei
K
ei
D
ei
:
It is obvious to conclude from the denition of V
3i
and (55) that
V
3i
t is bounded and therefore p
i
p
k
;
ei
and
ei
are bounded
for all tt
0
0. Integrating both sides of (55) results in
Z
t
t
0
W
i
d V
3i
t
0
V
3i
t V
3i
t
0
56
which means that the right-hand side of (56) exists and is
bounded. Since the time derivative of W
i
(t) along the solution of
the closed loop system (54) is bounded then it is straightforward
to conclude that W
i
(t) is uniformly continuous. Hence from
Barbalat's Lemma (Khalil, 2002), we have lim
t-
p
i
p
k
0 and
lim
t-
k
0. This completes the proof.
Remark 5.1. In practice, the bounded disturbances
di
t and the
nonlinear dynamic given in (2) are unknown, therefore the
controller given in (51) cannot be implemented. It is required in
this case that the controller contains some robust terms that are
able to compensate for these unknown disturbances effects and
unknown nonlinearities, this will be our motivation in the next
subsection to explore a strategy that employs the neural network
function approximation method in designing a robust tracking
controller.
5.2.2. Unknown dynamics with external perturbations
The individual dynamics of the mobile robots in terms of the
error variable
ei
accounting for the external perturbations are
given as follows:
M
i
_
ei
C
i
_
p
i
i
D
i
i
M _
vi
; _
i
B
i
F
i
di
57
Since the matrices M
i
; C
i
and D
i
are unknown, the model based
control law (51) is not valid for implementation. To overcome this
problem, robust terms are added to compensate for the uncertain-
ties in the model. For this purpose, the new controller for the
follower robot is dened as
F
n
i
B
1
i
K
ei
ei
p
i
p
k
ei
i
p
i

i
;
ei
" !
^
h
i
Z
i
_
^
W
i

i
S
i
Z
i
ei
i
^
W
i
^
h
i
Z
i

^
W
i
58
where h
i
Z
i
B
1
i
C
i
_
p
i
i
D
i
i
M _
vi
; _
i
and
^
h
i
Z
i
is its
current estimate, with Z
i
p
i
;
i
;
vi
;
i
; _
vi
; _
. The gain matrix
i
is positive denite and
i
is a positive scalar tuning gain. S
i
Z
i
is
the neural network basis function and W
i
is an unknown bounded
ideal weight matrix. Following the techniques in Das and Lewis
(2010), since h
i
Z
i
is a smooth nonlinearity of the robot model, it
can be approximated on a compact set
i
R by a neural network
function, that is
h
i
Z
i
W
i
S
i
Z
i

i
59
where
i
is the networked approximation error. The following
standard assumptions on the neural network function approxi-
mator are required for the stability analysis that follows the
design:
Assumption 5.1. The unknown ideal neural network weight
matrix W
i
is bounded by W
i
F
W
M
.
Assumption 5.2. The neural network basis functions S
i
are
bounded by S
i
S
M
.
Assumption 5.3. For a xed number of neurons, the neural net-
work approximation error is bounded by
i

M
.
Having dened the above assumptions, we can now state the
main result for the neural network design of the tracking controller
in the following theorem whose proof is given in the appendix.
Theorem 5.2. Considering the robot dynamics (2), we assume that
the external disturbances are bounded and the mobile robot para-
meters are uncertain. Under Assumption 3.1, design the torque input
and parameters update law for the mobile robot as in (58). Then, the
states of the closed loop system are uniformly ultimately bounded. In
particular, the position tracking error p
i
p
k
and
i
k
are con-
strained for all time t0 in a compact set
e
fetR
5
: et g
where e(t) is the vector of all error states of the system and is
dened in (78).
Remark 5.2. Note the controller (58) is designed in a decentra-
lized manner, in the sense that it only depends on relative position
information of the leader vehicle and from local sensors informa-
tion. In the case where three robots are involved in the formation
using the ll formation scheme, the controller (58) for each
follower remains unchange.
6. Generalization to formation of n mobile robots
The results so far presented, can be extended to formations of
n42 mobile robots. The structures that can be constructed with a
given number of robots representing a rooted tree in the context of
graph theory (Godsil & Royle, 2001). Let G be the directed graph
modeling the communication links between leader and follower
robots. In G, a vertex V
i
represents the ith robot and the edge
V
i
; V
j
symbolizes a direct communication from robot i to robot j.
Typical leaderfollower structure consists of constructing a
convoy-like formation as shown in Fig. 4(a) where a leader robot
vehicle is designated as V
0
to be the leader of V
1
and V
1
in turn is
the leader of the one that it follows and so on. Another cong-
uration for the robot formation is like the Y-formation as illu-
strated in Fig. 4(b) where a central leader is connected to two
robots through ll formation scheme and to other robots of the l
formation scheme. The following is a generalization of Theorem
5.1.
Fig. 4. Formation structure of multiple mobile robots with leaderfollower scheme.
Theorem 6.1. Consider a team of n mobile robots, one of them is
considered as the main leader of the formation V
0
. The remaining n1
mobile robots are the followers V
i
; i 1; ; n1 each has its own
dynamics given by (4). Multilayered formation blocks are constructed
by a combination of cascades of chains of leaderfollower pairs. Using
the control input (58) for each of the n1 follower robots, the
solutions of the overall closed-loop formation system are uniformly
ultimately bounded and the tracking errors converge to a compact set
F
e
fetR
5
: et
F
g where
F
is dened in (64).
Proof. Since the controller (58) is decentralized, each robot will
behave according to its position with respect to the leader
irrespective of the other follower positions. Then the stability
analysis of the whole formation is performed taking into account
each robot with respect to its location in the formation group.
Dene the following Lyapunov candidate function:
V
F

n
i 2
V
4i

1
2

n
i 2
p
i
p
k
2

2
ei

ei
M
i
ei
trf
~
W
i
1
i
~
W
i
g 60
Taking the time derivative of the Lyapunov function V
F
and by
completing the square gives
_
V
F

n
i 2
min
Q
i
x
i
2

n
i 2
P
i
x
i

n
i 2
min
Q
i
x
i
2

n
i 2
i
2
P
i
2

n
i 2
1
2
i
x
i
2

n
i 2

min
Q
i
1
2
i

x
i
2

n
i 2
i
2
P
i
2
61
Fig. 5. The tank and two EtsRos mobile robots in the experiments.
Fig. 6. Experimental setup architecture.
Table 1
r
i
0.04 m
b
i
0.1 m
a
i
0.02 m
m
i
2.3 kg
m
wi
0.28 kg
I
i
0.01 kg m
2
I
wi
0.0056 kg m
2
I
mi
0.002 kg m
2
v
i
[0,1.12] m s
1
i
[5.74,5.74] rad s
1
with
i
is any positive constant chosen such that
i
41=2
min
Q
i
.
Using the same argument as in the proof of Theorem 5.2, we have
_
V
F

n
i 2
i
V
4i

n
i 2
i
2
P
i
2
62
where
i

2
min
Q
i
1
2
i

max
R
i
:
Let a min
i 2;;n
f
i
g and b
n
i 2
i
=2P
i
2
, this implies that
the time derivative of the Lyapunov function V
F
has the following
form:
_
V
F
aV
F
b 63
Similar to the proof of Theorem 5.2, we obtain the same conclu-
sion that the tracking error states e(t) are bounded and converge to
the compact set
F
e
fetR
5
: et
F
g where
F
is given by
2b
a
r
64
This completes the proof.
Remark 6.1. It should be noted that to ensure non-collision
among the robots during the formation manoeuver, one needs to
carefully design the relative distance and orientation of the
desired virtual vehicle such that the distance between each pair
of mobile robots should at least satisfy a security distance range of
L 2
F
(Cuia et al., 2010), where L is the length of the robot.
However, as soon as an obstacle enters the detection region of
robots, they adjust their trajectories to avoid collision. This
adjustment may produce conicts causing a violation of the
security distance range L 2
F
and collision may take place among
robots. This should not be neglected from the design of the
controller and needs to be addressed in future work.
7. Experimental results
7.1. Testbed
To demonstrate the computational simplicity of the control
algorithm developed in the previous sections, experimental tests
were conducted in an indoor environment. Fig. 5 shows three mobile
robots, two of them are the EtsRo (Ghommam, Mehrjerdi, Saad, &
Mnif, 2010) and the third is a tank robot used as the leader of the
formation. The EtsRo mobile robot, are equipped with a couple of
driving front wheels and DC motors 7.5 V and 175 r/min each.
The EtsRo position sensors consist of high precision wheel enco-
ders giving the relative position of the vehicle, mounted on the motors
counting (6000 pulses/turn). Within each robot, a 32-bit micro-con-
troller ATmega32 maintains support for all sensor and actuation
features of the robot and manages the navigation, guidance and
control of the vehicle. A central computer-controlled workstation runs
25 30 35 40 45 50
10
8
6
4
2
x 10
3
Time [s]
l
l
k
l
d

[
m
]
25 30 35 40 45 50
Time [s]
l
k
d

[
r
a
d
]

25 30 35 40 45 50
0.085
0.09
0.095
0.1
0.105
0.11
Time [s]
E
s
t
i
m
a
t
e
d

l
i
n
e
a
r

v
e
l
o
c
i
t
y

1

[
m
s
1
]
25 30 35 40 45 50
0.01
0
0.01
0.02
0.03
0
0.1
0.2
0.3
0.4
0.5
Time [s]
E
s
t
i
m
a
t
e
d

l
i
n
e
a
r

v
e
l
o
c
i
t
y
2

[
m
s
1
]

Fig. 8. Separation and bearing errors (a) and (b). Estimated linear velocities for the follower robots (c) and (d).
0 2 4 6 8 10
1.5
1
0.5
0
0.5
1
1.5
2
2.5
3
3.5
4
X[m]
Y
[
m
]
Follower robot 2
Follower robot 1
The leader
Fig. 7. Positions of the three robots at several times along their trajectories.
in parallel two control algorithms, the lter algorithm detailed in Eq.
(18) which provides an estimation of the leader velocity u
k
given in
Eq. (19) and the control program for the leaderfollower trajectory
tracking algorithm that boils down to the control input F
n
i
and the
update of the weighting matrix W
i
given in Eq. (58). The algorithms
are implemented using Simulink (Matlab) and executed with a
sampling time of T
s
50 ms for each robot. The central workstation
then distributes the ltered velocity as well as the torque inputs to
each mobile robots in the group remotely through a Zigbee USB-
Modem using the MathWorks xPCTarget to feed the ATmega with
necessary data for navigation. EtsRo robots update their position and
velocity using odometry and send it back to the computer workstation
to refresh the leaderfollower program with the robots' conguration
information. The range of modem is about 100 m which makes it a
high-quality Modem for indoor applications. The overall control
architecture is shown in Fig. 6.
The environment in which the robots can evolve is a rectan-
gular eld 4 m 10 m. Assuming that the follower EtsRo mobile
robots are identical, the nominal robots parameters (which were
obtained via identication) are given in Table 1. The expressions
for each element of the mass matrix are given as
m
11i
0:25b
2
i
r
2
i
m
i
b
2
i
I
i
I
wi
65
m
12i
0:25b
2
i
r
2
i
m
i
b
2
i
I
i
66
m
i
m
i
2m
wi
67
I
i
m
i
a
2
i
2m
wi
b
2
i
I
i
2I
mi
68
7.2. Experimental tests
To illustrate the transient motion behavior of the follower robots
associated to the proposed scheme, two complete series of experi-
ments are conducted in which two EtsRo mobile robots assemble
then maintain a specic formation shape with respect to the tank
leader-robot. For all set of experiments, the control parameters and
gains are selected as diag5; 5, diag10; 10, K diag10; 10,
0 10 20 30 40 50 60
Time [s]
x
e
1

[
m
]
0 10 20 30 40 50 60
Time [s]
x
e
2
[
m
]
0 10 20 30 40 50 60
3
2
1
0
1
1
0.5
0
0.5
Time [s]
y
e
1
[
m
]
10 20 30 40 50 60
0.5
0
0.5
1
0
1
0.5
0
0.5
Time [s]
y
e
2
[
m
]
Fig. 10. Trajectory error tracking for follower robots.
25 30 35 40 45 50
0
0.15
0.1
0.05
0.05
Time [s]
E
s
t
i
m
a
t
e
d

a
n
g
u
l
a
r

v
e
l
o
c
i
t
y
f
o
l
l
o
w
e
r

1

[
r
a
d
s
1
]
25 30 35 40 45 50
0
0.15
0.1
0.05
0.05
Time [s]
E
s
t
i
m
a
t
e
d

a
n
g
u
l
a
r

v
e
l
o
c
i
t
y
f
o
l
l
o
w
e
r

2

[
r
a
d
s
1
]
Fig. 9. Estimated angular velocities for the follower robots.
k
i
10; k
i
30, K
diag50; 50. The basis functions are chosen to

be of the form S
ki
Z expZ
i
Z
i
=
2
i
; k 1; ; n where
i
is
the receptive eld and
i
is the width of the Gaussian function. The
NN design parameters are
i
5 and
i
diag0:5; 0:5. The initial
weights
^
W
i
0 is a 2 by 2 zero square matrix. During the formation,
the tank leader cruises with a maximum velocity of 1 m s
1
along a
feasible reference trajectory.
The purpose is to validate the proposed neural network
adaptive controller for the ll scheme approach for the leader
following formation algorithm. In this scheme, the tank robot R
L
is
designated as the leader of the formation while the EtsRo mobile
robots R
1
r
and R
2
r
are the followers. With this scheme, R
1
r
follows
the leader R
L
and it also serves together with R
L
as the leaders for
R
2
r
. Initial conditions are given as
1
2; 1; 0
for the follower

robot R
1
r
and
2
0; 0; 0
for the follower robot R

2
r
. Parameters
for the ll scheme are l
l1
1 m and
l1
=3 rad for the rst
follower and l
l2
1 m and
l2
=3 rad for the second follower
robot. The results of the leaderfollower formation scheme with
wedge shape formation are shown in Fig. 7. Fig. 8(a) and (b) shows
the time evolution of the separation and the bearing errors
respectively. Fig. 8(c) and (d) depicts the evolution of the esti-
mated linear velocity of the virtual vehicle for follower robots R
1
r
and R
2
r
with respect to the real linear velocity of the leader
vehicle. Fig. 9 shows the time evolution of the angular velocity of
the virtual vehicle for the follower robots R
1
r
and R
2
r
compared to
the real angular velocity of the leader vehicle. The tracking errors
between the follower robots R
1
r
and R
2
r
and their respective
virtual vehicles are shown in Fig. 10. The heading errors for the
follower robot with respect to the leader robot is given in Fig. 11.
These gures clearly illustrate that the follower robots move close
to their desired trajectory given by the position of their virtual
vehicles. Figs. 12 and 13 show boundedness of the NN weight
estimates
^
W
i
for the EtsRo robot followers. Fig. 14 shows the
evolution of the Lyapunov function over the entire period of
experimentation. Clearly from the experimentation, the overall
Lyapunov function of the closed loop system tends to become
smaller than its initial value and keeps chattering around zero
during the leaderfollower formation process, this is mainly due to
the effect of sensor noise measurements and also due to the
presence of unmatched uncertainties in the robots' model. Figs. 15
and 16 demonstrate the control inputs for the each of the EtsRo
robot followers. The proposed leaderfollower scheme for the
wedge formation pattern has a satisfactory control performance.
0 10 20 30 40 50 60
4
3
2
1
0
1
2
Time [s]
e
1
0 10 20 30 40 50 60
5
4
3
2
1
0
1
2
3
Time [s]
e
2
Fig. 11. Heading errors of the follower robots.
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
Time [s]
N
N

w
e
i
g
h
t
s
Fig. 12. NN weight estimates
^
W
1
for the rst EtsRo mobile robot.
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50
5
4.4
4.6
4.8
5.2
5.4
5.6
5.8
6
Time [s]
N
N

w
e
i
g
h
t
s
Fig. 13. NN weight estimates
^
W
2
for the second EtsRo mobile robot.
8. Conclusion
In this paper, the design of a leader-follow controller for a group of
mobile robots was presented. As opposed to conventional methods,
the velocity of the leader robot is not available as an exogenous input
for designing an inputoutput feedback controller for the follower
robots. A virtual vehicle approach is proposed to design the formation
control which consists in generating a reference trajectory for a virtual
vehicle to be tracked by each follower in the formation. The control
input for the virtual vehicles is designed using only the measurement
of the leader vehicle. Once the virtual vehicles converged to their
desired position, tracking control for the follower robots is constructed
using the neural network backstepping technique to ensure that the
follower robots approach their virtual position in free-obstacle
environment.
Acknowledgements
The work of the rst author was supported in part by a grant
from the cole de Technologie Suprieure in Canada. The authors
would like to thank Adam Allen for many helpful discussions. The
authors would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers for
their constructive comments and criticism.
Appendix
To study the stability of the tracking errors, we start by dening
the following Lyapunov function candidate:
V
4i
V
3i

1
2
trf
~
W
i
1
i
~
W
i
g 69
where
~
W
i
W
i
^
W
i
is the parameter estimation error. The time
derivative of V
4i
gives
_
V
4i

_
V
3i
trf
~
W
i
1
i
_
~
W
i
g W
i

ei
d
trf
~
W
i
1
i
_
~
W
i
g 70
For the clarity of the analysis, we dene the error vector
e
i
t p
i
p
k
;
ei
;
ei
, inequality (70) in terms of the new error

variable rewrites
_
V
4i
s
i
e
i
2
e
i
M
d
M
trf
~
W
i
1
i
_
~
W
i
g
s
i
e
i
2
e
i
M
d
M

i
trf
~
W
i
W
i
~
W
i
g
s
i
e
i
2
e
i
M
d
M

i
W
M
~
W
i
~
W
i
2
F
71
where we have used the fact that
_
~
W
i

_
^
W
i
and
_
^
W
i
is dened in
(58) and the parameter s
i
2 minf
i
V
L
; k
ei
;
min
K
ei
g. For the
sequel, we will be using the variable s
i
that we dene as follows
s
i
2 maxf
i
V
L
; k
ei
;
min
K
ei
g. In a matrix form (71) rewrites
_
V
4i
"
e
i
t
W
i
F
#
s
i
0
0
i
" #
|{z}
Q
i
e
i
t
W
i
F
" #

M
d
M
i
W
M
|{z}
P
i
e
i
t
W
i
F
" #
x
i
Q
i
x
i
P
i
x
i
72
It is straightforward to see that
_
V
4i
is negative denite only if
x
i
4
P
i
min
Q
i
73
which shows that the error vectors et and W
i
are uniformly
ultimately bounded UUB. Next we will try to evaluate the bounds
to which the error vector e
i
t abides by.
Inequality (72) rewrites
_
V
4i
x
i
Q
i
x
i
P
i
x
i
i
V
4i

i
V
4i
p
74
where
i
2
min
Q
i
=
max
R
i
with R
i
diags
i
; 1=
max
i
and
2
p
P
i
=
min
R
i
p
. Let S
i

V
4i
p
, thus using the upper Dini-
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50
2
1
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
Time[s]
F
1
i
[
N
]

i
=
1
,
2
Fig. 15. Control input component F
1i
of each EtsRo.
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50
2
1.5
1
0.5
0
0.5
1
1.5
Time[s]
F
2
i
[
N
]

i
=
1
,
2
Fig. 16. Control input component F
2i
of each EtsRo.
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
Time [s]
L
y
a
p
u
n
o
v

f
u
n
c
t
i
o
n

V
F
Fig. 14. Time evolution of the Lyapunov function V
F
.
derivative (Khalil, 2002), we have the following:
D
S
i
i
2
S
i

i
2
75
consequently
S
i
t e
R
t
t
0
i
=2 ds
S
i
t
0

Z
t
t
0
e
R
t

i
=2 ds
i
d
e
i
=2tt
0
S
i
t
0

i
i
1e
i
=2tt
0
76
thus
V
4i
p
e
i
=2tt
0
V
4i
p
t
0

i
i
1e
i
=2tt
0

V
4i
p
t
0

i
i
77
which yields the following bound:
e
i
txt
max
R
i
min
R
i
s

e
i
t
0
~
Wt
0
2
q
P
i
max
R
i
2
p

min
Q
i
min
R
i
p 78
Clearly the error state e
i
(t) is bounded for all time t 4t
0
. This
completes the proof.
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Journal of the Franklin Institute 348 (2011) 973998
Review
Cascade design for formation control of
nonholonomic systems in chained form
Jawhar Ghommam
a,
, Hasan Mehrjerdi
b
,
Faic- al Mnif
a,c
, Maarouf Saad
b
a
Research Unit on Mechatronics and Autonomous Systems,

Ecole Nationale dIng enieurs de Sfax (ENIS),
b
Department of Electrical Engineering,

Ecole de technologie sup erieure,
1100, rue Notre-Dame Ouest Montr eal, Qu ebec, Canada
c
Received 13 July 2010; received in revised form 12 March 2011; accepted 22 March 2011
Available online 30 March 2011
Abstract
This paper presents a constructive method to design a cooperative state and output feedback to
steer a group of nonholonomic mobile robots in chained form to form a desired geometric formation
shape. The control methodology divides the resulting tracking error dynamics into a cascaded of
linear and time-varying subsystems. A basic consensus algorithm is rst applied to the linear
subsystem which makes the states synchronize exponentially to zero. Once this rst linear subsystem
has converged, the second cascade can be treated as a linear time-varying subsystem perturbed by a
vanishing term from its cascade. A dynamic state and output feedback is constructed to achieve
synchronization of the rest of the states. The proof of stability is given using a result from cascade
systems. Since time delay appears in many interconnection networks and particularly in cooperative
control, its effect on the stability of the closed-loop system is analyzed using Razumikhim theorem.
It is shown that the established cooperative controller work well even in the presence of time delay.
Numerical simulations are performed on models of car-like mobile robots to show the effectiveness
of the proposed cooperative state and output-feedback controllers.
& 2011 The Franklin Institute. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
www.elsevier.com/locate/jfranklin
0016-0032/$32.00 & 2011 The Franklin Institute. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.jfranklin.2011.03.008
Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: jghommam@gmail.com (J. Ghommam), hasan.mehrjerdi.1@ens.etsmtl.ca (H. Mehrjerdi),
mnif@squ.edu.om (F. Mnif), maarouf.saad@etsmtl.ca (M. Saad).
Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 974
1.1. Motivation and related works . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 974
1.2. Statement of contribution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 975
1.3. Organization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 976
2. Background and preliminaries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 976
2.1. Graph theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 976
2.2. Consensus for single integrator. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 977
3. Problem statement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 979
3.1. Nonholonomic kinematic model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 979
3.2. The formation control objective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 980
4. Main result . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 981
4.1. Coordination with state feedback . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 981
4.2. Observer-based coordination control. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 986
5. Stability analysis of the closed-loop system with communication delay . . . . . . . . . . . . . 988
6. Numerical simulations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 991
7. Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 995
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 996
1. Introduction
Over the last 10 years there has been an increasing interest in the study of the multi-agent
systems with application to engineering problems which includes synchronization of oscillators
[1,2], parallel computation [3], consensus algorithms [46], coordinated motion control [7].
A particular attention is brought in the study of the collective motion of multiple robots due to
its challenging applications and the advantages it offers over the control of a single mobile robot
such as cleansing operations of tapered structures [8], rescue operations, mapping of hazardous
environment, distributed transportation, and multi-point surveillance. Like almost all control
strategies for coordination control, the mobile robot systems need to exchange information
among neighboring robots such as position or velocity so that the team of mobile robots can
effectively cooperate. An effective strategy to design a coordination controller is to ensure that
the shared information among vehicles converges asymptotically to a common value. This paper
proposes a constructive method based on consensus algorithm to design a coordination
controller to force a group of n mobile robots to perform a desired formation pattern.
1.1. Motivation and related works
There have been many different control strategies for mobile robot formation reported in the
literature, such as the behavior-based approach [911], the virtual-structure [7,1215], the
leaderfollower approach [1621], articial potential [2225], graph theory [26,27] and other
relevant techniques like consensus algorithms in which a group of vehicles try to negotiate with
their neighbors to reach an agreement on a common state. This type of algorithm has been
studied extensively for single integrator [28,29] as well as for double integrator [6]. For single
integrator the authors in Olfati-Saber [25], proposed a methodology based on the Lyapunov
approach and graph theory to investigate consensus problems with time delay. This approach
was then extended by Ren and Beard [4] to present consensus solutions with less stringent
conditions for treating dynamically changing interaction topologies among the agents.
Consensus problems for systems modeled as a double integrator have been paid a lot of
attentions due to their importance in mobile robots applications. In Ren and Beard [30] the
authors presented two types of second-order consensus algorithms, by which the agents states
agree to a common constant value or converge to a time-varying reference function. Moreover
the authors, investigated cases of xed and switching communication topologies and provided
sufcient conditions for the consensus of a double-integrator problem. The consensus protocols
discussed so far have not addressed the consensus of positive exponential dynamics. Recent
advances on multi-agents with double-integrator dynamics was presented in Zhu et al. [31]. The
authors proposed a more general form of consensus protocols capable of realizing different
consensus dynamics including linear, periodic and positive exponential dynamics by selecting
different gains. More recent developments on consensus algorithms either for continuous or
discrete-time systems can be found in details in Zhang and Tian [32] and Peng and Yang [33] to
name a few.
All the aforementioned work on consensus algorithms were obtained for linear agents,
represented either by a single integrator or fully actuated agent which can be converted to
double-integrator dynamics through feedback linearization. However, a lot of interesting
applications involve dynamical systems that are purely nonlinear and which exhibit some
geometric constraints or henceforth called nonholonomic constraints for mobile robots [34].
The cooperative control of nonholonomic robot are considered in Ren [35], Ren et al. [5]
where the authors transformed the dynamic of the robots to double-integrator dynamics
which gives the ability to control the hand position instead of the inertial position of the
robots and therefore, the robots heading cannot be controlled. It seems then desirable to
have control over all the state vectors of each mobile robot in the formation. Very recently
Dong and Farrell [36,37] proposed a decentralized cooperative control for general
nonholonomic agents to address collective motion along a predened trajectory, this
problem has been solved by introducing a suitable variable transformation that converted
the cooperative system error dynamics into a triangular form to which the backstepping
technique can be applied. The use of the backstepping procedure yields a very complicated
control law. Although, this technique seems to be powerful and leads to asymptotic
convergence of the coordinated states to zero, the cooperative controller lacks a clear
physical interpretation and the subsequent analysis is quite dull and laborious.
1.2. Statement of contribution
Motivated by this recent development for cooperative control of multiple nonholonomic
mobile robots for which kinematics can be written in chained form [38], this paper presents
a novel cooperative controller for a general model of nonholonomic systems. The objective
is to design a cooperative controller that lends itself to easy implementation, which is one
of the key considerations of software programming. Based on a result for tracking control
of chained form systems in Lefeber et al. [39] and on tools from cascade theory [40], we
propose a cooperative control design in two steps which results in a linear time-varying
cooperative controller. As the main focus of the paper is to design a controller such that
the position of each nonholonomic robot tracks a target point moving along a desired
trajectory, a kinematic error dynamic is then derived for each robot. This dynamic being in
cascade form, we start by designing a consensus algorithm for the rst cascade, called driving
subsystem, such that the x-positions of the robot synchronize and the x-error dynamic
converges to zero. In the second step, we deal with the driven subsystem (i.e., second
cascade), to design a dynamic state feedback cooperative controller. A simple mathematical
manipulation shows that the driven subsystem in reality is a linear time-varying state-space
model (A(t), B) perturbed by some terms from the driving subsystem. Inspired by the recent
work of Scardovi and Sepulchre [41], we propose a cooperative controller that makes the
states of each cascade synchronize with the cascades states of the neighboring robots. Last,
we use the same approach to consider dynamic cooperative output feedback for chained
form systems. In both designs, we assume that the communication between neighboring
robots undergoes some disruptions, but we assume that the overall topology in terms of
graph is maintained connected. Since communication channels in cooperative control
introduces time delay which is known to deteriorate the cooperative control performance
and might destabilize the overall closed-loop system, its effect on the stability of the closed-
loop system is analyzed using Razumikhim theorem. It is shown that the proposed
cooperative controller works well even in the presence of time delay.
1.3. Organization
The paper is organized as follows. In Section 2 some preliminary results are reviewed
and lemma used throughout the paper are summarized. The problem formulation is
discussed in detail in Section 3. In Section 4 the main result for cooperative state and
output feedback is presented. Section 5 considers the cooperative control with time delay.
In Section 6, numerical simulations are presented to show the effectiveness of the proposed
approach. Finally conclusion and future work are given in Section 7.
2. Background and preliminaries
The collective motion of mobile robots and their interactions with their neighbors are
best treated by a graph with nodes and edges representing the robots and the underlying
communication network respectively. We will introduce some basic denitions and notions
from graph theory that are useful for the subsequent sections. A thorough treatment of this
theory is presented in Godsil and Royle [42].
2.1. Graph theory
A team of n interacting mobile robots through information exchange can be modeled
by a graph G. For mobile robot i, we denote its set of communication neighbors as N
i
. The
path from neighboring robots to robot i is called edges, the set of edges is denoted by
E fi; jjj 2 N
i
g. The adjacency matrix A 2 R
nn
is dened as
a
ij

a
ij
Z0 if j 2 N
i
0 otherwise
&
1
The degree d
i
of node i is dened as the number of its neighboring nodes i.e., d
i

P
n
j1
a
ij
.
The degree matrix D 2 R
nn
is dened as D=diag(d
i
). The weighted Laplacian of a graph G
is the matrix L=DA which is generally not symmetric. A fundamental propriety of this
matrix is that every row sum of L is 0 and has a zero eigenvalue corresponding to a right
eigenvector 1
n
1; 1; . . . ; 1
>
2 R
n
. It is obvious that L1
n
=0. Let S fl
i
ji 1; . . . ; ng
denotes the spectrum of L, the eigenvalues l
i
are real and satisfy l
1
0 and 0ol
2
r
l
3
r. . . ; l
n
if and only if the graph G is connected. Throughout, we consider the following
assumption on the underlying communication graph.
Assumption 1. The communication exchange between robots are bidirectional, the graph G
in consideration is therefore undirect and connected.
2.2. Consensus for single integrator
We consider n agents
1
represented by a single-integrator dynamics given by
_
x
i
u
i
; i 1; . . . ; n 2
where
_
x
i
2 R is the state of the ith agent and u
i
2 R is the control input. We seek a control
law for system (2), such that the states of agent i synchronize with the neighbors states
according to the communication topology dened by a connected graph G.
Denition 1 (Olfati-Saber et al. [28]). We say the control law u
i
asymptotically solves the
consensus problem, if and only if the states of agents satisfy
lim
t-1
x
i
tx
j
t 0; 8iaj 2 N
i
3
To solve the consensus problem, Olfati-Saber [25] proposed a control algorithm using a
local and distributed relative state information as follows:
u
i

X
j2N
i
a
ij
x
i
x
j
4
with the control (4), the system (2) in closed loop by putting all the states
_
x
i
, i=1,y,n in a
stack vector z x
1
; x
2
; . . . ; x
n
>
writes
_ z Lz 5
Lemma 2.1 (Olfati-Saber [25]). Consider a team of n agents modeled by a single integrator
(2). Assume that the underlying communication topology G is connected and that each agent
runs the control law (4). Then, the consensus problem is globally asymptotically solved.
Moreover, an equilibrium of system (5) is a state in the form z
a; . . . ; a
>
a1
n
is globally
exponentially stable where a 1=n
P
n
i1
z
i
0.
Note that when the inter-connected agents are moving, it might happen that some of the
communication links can disconnect during an interval of time due to the existence of an
obstacle between agents. It has been shown in Olfati-Saber [25] that if the altered graph
remains connected for all time tZ0, then objective (3) is achieved. We still can prove under
a restrictive persistency of excitation condition that if the graph connectivity is established
over a period of time then objective (3) is met.
Lemma 2.2 (Aguiar et al. [43]). Consider the inter-connected systems given by Eq. (5),
and suppose that the weighted Laplacian of a graph Gt satises the following persistency of
1
Here an agent refers to any autonomous vehicle that can be reduced to a single-integrator dynamic.
excitation (PE), that is, there exist positive constants g
m
; g
M
and T such that
g
m
I
n1
r
Z
tT
t
Lt dtrg
M
I
n1
; 8tZ0 6
where I
n1
is the n1 n1 identity matrix and Lt U
>
LtU with U is an n n1
orthogonal matrix dened in Kaminer et al. [44]. Then the objective (3) is satised for suitable
value of g
m
and T.
Remark 2.1. The persistency of excitation condition (6) only requires that the connectivity
of the graph be established over an interval of period T and not pointwise in time.
Similar condition for coordination law can be found in Aguiar et al. [43], Arcak [45] and
Lin et al. [46].
Lemma 2.3. Consider a linear time-varying system represented by the following equation:
_ Z AtZLtZ 7
where A(t) is a time-varying matrix, globally bounded such that the nominal system _ Z AtZ
is uniformly exponentially stable and Lt is nonsingular time-varying matrix satisfying the
persistency of excitation-like condition (6). The solutions for the dynamic (7) are uniformly
exponentially stable with sufciently large constants g
m
and T.
Proof. From the denition of the matrix A(t) being bounded and the solutions of the
nominal dynamic system (i.e. _ Z AtZ) are uniformly exponentially stable, then using the
converse Lyapunov lemma [47], there exists a strictly positive constants c
1
, c
2
, c
3
and c
4
and
a matrix Qt satisfying c
3
IrQtrc
4
I such that the unique solution P
0
(t) of
_
Pt At
>
Pt PtAt Qt
satises
c
1
IrP
0
trc
2
I
To prove uniform exponential stability for the solutions of Eq. (7), we consider the
following candidate Lyapunov function for system (7) as follows:
Vt; Z Z
>
P
0
tZ Vt; Z 8
where Vt; Z is a Lyapunov function dened similarly to Loria [48] but in matrix form as
follows:
Vt; z W
1
W
2
9
where W
1
and W
2
are dened respectively
W
1
z 1 L
M
z
>
z; W
2
t; z
Z
1
t
e
tt
z
>
Ltz dt
with z U
>
z and the constant L
M
is dened such that for all time t it is veried that
L
M
4JLtJ. It is easy then to check that the function W
2
is upper bounded by the
following expression:
W
2
t; zr
Z
tT
t
e
T
z
>
Ltz dtrg
m
e
T
JzJ
2
10
We can easily determine a lower bound for W
2
as follows:
W
2
t; z
Z
1
t
e
tt
z
>
Ltz dtZL
M
JzJ
2
Z
1
t
e
tt
dt L
M
JzJ
2
11
consequently as W
2
t; zZL
M
JzJ
2
then the Lyapunov function V is positive denite. The
time derivative of Eq. (8) along the solutions of Eq. (7) gives
_
Vt; Z Z
>
QZZ
>
Lt
>
P
0
t P
0
tLtZ 1 L
M
Z
>
AtZ
1 L
M
Z
>
LtZ W
2
t; Z Z
>
LtZ
Z
1
t
e
tt
Z
>
LtAtZ dt
Z
1
t
e
tt
Z
>
LtLtZ dt
rc
3
JZJ
2
2c
2
L
M
1 L
M
g
A
JZJ
2
jW
2
jg
A
2L
2
M
g
m
e
T
JZJ
2
rc
3
JZJ
2
2c
2
L
M
1 2L
M
g
A
JZJ
2
2L
2
M
g
m
e
T
JZJ
2
rkJZJ
2
12
with k c
3
2L
2
M
g
m
e
T
2c
2
L
M
1 2L
M
g
A
and g
A
is such that g
A
ZJAtJ. The
time derivative of the Lyapunov function V is negative denite, only if k is positive, to this
end one can choose a sufciently large value for the design parameter g
m
and T so that
_
V is
negative. This ends the proof. &
Remark 2.2. Note that the above lemma is different from that presented in Scardovi and
Sepulchre [41] for linear time-varying system, in which the authors considered the matrix
A(t) to be periodic of period T which enables via a state transformation and the use of
the Floquet theory to make the system matrix time-invariant, whereas in our lemma, the
matrix A(t) under consideration is only requested to be stable and time-varying bounded
matrix.
Remark 2.3. The derivation of the coordination controller in the subsequent section will
lead through a suitable change of coordinates to the dynamic of the form (5) or of the
form (7), the proof of the result subsequently will principally rely on the results of the last
two lemma.
3. Problem statement
3.1. Nonholonomic kinematic model
We consider a group of n nonholonomic systems whose allowable trajectories of the ith
nonholonomic system can be written as the solutions of the driftless system [49]
_ x
i
g
1i
x
i
u
1i
g
2i
x
i
u
2i
13
where x
i
is the system state and g
ki
, k=1,2, are smooth vector elds on R
l
linearly
independent for all x
i
2 R
l
and u
1i
and u
2i
are control inputs. As observed in several
research papers [50,51] and the references therein, system (13) is representative of many
nonlinear mechanical systems particularly cars and mobile robots. It has been proven in
the literature (e.g. Laiou and Astol [52]) that this class of nonholonomic systems can be
transformed globally or locally into the following chained form by smooth states and input
transformations.
_ x
1i
u
1i
; _ x
2i
u
2i
; _ x
ki
x
k1i
u
1i
; 3rkrl 14
where x
1i
and x
li
are to be interpreted as the position of a mobile robot in the XY plane.
The class of systems represented by Eq. (14) are shown to be completely controllable but
do not satisfy Brocketts necessary conditions to be asymptotically stabilizable by smooth
static or dynamic feedback laws [53]. For this reason, decade ago an important step has
been made toward the design of suitable controllers guaranteeing exponential regulation of
a nonholonomic system [38,54] or constructive approaches to resolve problems related to
trajectory tracking and path following for a class of driftless systems of the form given by
Eq. (14) [55,56]. As the control problem is extended to formation of control of multiple
nonholonomic systems, the formulations presented so far in the literature are no longer
suitable for controlling a team of nonholonomic systems.
3.2. The formation control objective
The formation control problem in this paper requires that the vehicles collectively
maintain a prescribed geometric shape while its center of gravity moves along a desired
trajectory x
d
x
1d
; x
2d
; . . . ; x
ld
>
generated by
_ x
1d
u
1d
; _ x
2d
u
2d
; _ x
kd
x
k1d
u
1d
; 3rkrl 15
where u
1d
and u
2d
are known time-varying functions, such that the desired control u
1d
is a
bounded continuously differentiable function and satises the persistency of excitation
condition [39], i.e., there exist an integer rZ0 such that there exist T40 and d40 for which
Z
tT
t
u
2r2
1d
t dtZd; 8tZ0
With this assumption, the formation control problem considered in this paper can be
reformulated similar to Dong and Farrell [36] as nding a decentralized control law for
Eq. (14) such that each robot places itself in its desired position relative to the formation
shape as shown in Fig. 1:
lim
t-1
x
1i
L
xi
lim
t-1
x
1j
L
xj
; 8iaj 2 N
i
16
lim
t-1
x
li
L
yi
lim
t-1
x
lj
L
yj
; 8iaj 2 N
i
17
and the center of gravity of the formation shape keeps tracking the desired trajectory (15), i.e.,
lim
t-1
x
1d
1
n
X
n
i1
x
1i
!
0; lim
t-1
x
ld
1
n
X
n
i1
x
2i
!
0 18
where L
xi
and L
yi
are constants which dene the geometry of the formation pattern. Therefore
the desired spacing d
ij
between two neighboring vehicles is directly calculated by the relation
d
ij

L
x
i
L
x
j
2
L
y
i
L
y
j
2
q
.
Remark 3.1. It is of interest to note that the satisfaction of Eqs. (16) and (17) implies the
satisfaction of Eq. (18), the converse is not true. When both objectives are met, the
formation maintains a rigid geometric relationship among the robots, while the centroid of
this formation moves along the desired trajectory dened by Eq. (15).
Remark 3.2. To achieve the control objectives, we design the controls u
1i
and u
2i
for the robot
i based on the local measurement of the states of the ith mobile robot, the relative states
between robot i and robot j and the desired trajectory [x
1d
, y
1d
]. In the design, we divide the
coordinated controller for the error tracking chained form system of robot i into a cascade of
two coordinated subsystems which can be controlled independently from each other.
4. Main result
In this section, a cascaded design for coordination control for a team of nonholonomic
systems will be formulated to meet the objectives. As mentioned in Remark 4, the design
contains two constructive stages. First, we look for a coordinated controller for the control
input u
1i
which is such that the tracking error between the state x
1i
, i=1,y,n and its
desired position converges exponentially to zero and that the objective (16) is satised.
Once the rst controller has been established, the error tracking relating the rst state x
1i
seems to be decoupled from the rest of chained system, we then decide on using the control
input u
2i
to guarantee that the objectives (17)(18) are satised.
4.1. Coordination with state feedback
Before going onward the development, we rst introduce the following set of error states:
x
1ei
x
1i
x
1d
L
xi

1
n
X
n
k1
L
xk
19
x
lei
x
li
x
ld
L
yi

1
n
X
n
k1
L
yk
20
x
kei
x
ki
x
kd
; 8k 2; . . . ; l1 21
Y
X
x
1d
y
1d
x
i
y
i
vehicle i
vehicle j
(
Lx
i
Lx
j
)
2
+
(
Ly
i
Ly
j
)
2
Fig. 1. Formation setup.
The rst and the second error states (19) and (20) denote respectively the X and Y error
positions of the ith robot with respect to its conguration in the group. The tracking errors
(21) embed the orientation and the velocity of the ith robots. The time derivative of
Eqs. (19)(21) along the solutions of Eqs. (14) and (15) gives the following two subsystems:
X
0
1
: _ x
1ei
u
1i
u
1d
X
0
2
:
_ x
2ei
u
2i
u
2d
_ x
kei
x
k1i
u
1i
x
k1d
u
1d
8k 3; . . . ; l
8
>
<
>
:
22
The structure (22) suggests that we design the control input u
1i
and u
2i
independently from
each other. For the rst subsystem
P
0
1
we need to nd a linear controller such that x
1ei
-0
as time goes to innity and the objective (16) is satised. The state x
1ei
consequently will
represent a vanishing perturbing term for subsystem
P
0
2
and therefore the design of a
coordinated controller u
2i
to synchronize the rest of the error states will be easy to nd. This
will be clearer in the subsequent theorems. Based on the rst equation of Eq. (22), we
propose the following decentralized controller:
u
1i
u
1d
k
xi
x
1ei
X
j2N
i
a
ij
tx
1ei
x
1ej
; 8iaj 23
where k
xi
are positive gains and a
ij
(t) is a time-varying element from the adjacency matrix.
We can now state the main theorem for the coordination of the robots X-position.
Theorem 4.1. Assume that the graph G is connected for all tZt
0
and the corresponding
weighted Laplacian matrix L(t) satises the persistency of excitation (PE) (6). The control
law (23) makes the tracking and formation errors (respectively x
1ei
and x
1ei
x
1ej
; 8iaj)
converge to zero exponentially.
Proof. By taking x
1e
x
1e1
; x
1e2
; . . . ; x
1en
>
and K
x
diagk
x
1
; . . . ; k
x
n
, the closed-loop
system of
P
0
1
with the control input u
1i
dened in Eq. (23) can be written in matrix form
_ x
1e
K
x
x
1e
Ltx
1e
24
Apply the change of variable proposed by Scardovi and Sepulchre [41] as follows:
z e
K
x
tt
0
x
1e
25
in the new coordinate, Eq. (24) rewrites
_
z Lte
K
x
tt
0
x
1e
Ltz 26
which from Lemma 2.2, we show that lim
t-1
x
1ei
x
1ej
0 and consequently Ltx
1e
-0
as time goes to innity. From Eq. (24) and the fact that lim
t-1
Ltx
1e
0, yield the
obvious conclusion that x
1e
converges to zero exponentially as time goes to innity. This
completes the proof. &
Remark 4.1. Note that when the coordination error x
1ei
x
1ej
=0, then objective (16) is
satised. It is also easily veried that the rst objective of Eq. (18) is met when x
1ei
=0.
Next step consists in nding the control input u
2i
to synchronize the remaining error states
of Eq. (22). Before that, let us try to rearrange subsystem
P
0
2
such that it is written as the
sum of a driving (i.e., in this case the driving subsystem is the closed-loop system (24)) and
a driven dynamics. Noting that subsystem
P
0
2
can be seen as an l1 dimensional linear
time-varying system, a simple calculation shows that Eq. (22) can be written as a cascaded
structure of two subsystems as shown in Eq. (27)
_ x
2ei
_ x
3ei
^
^
_ x
lei
2
6
6
6
6
6
6
4
3
7
7
7
7
7
7
5
0 ^ ^ ^ 0
u
1d
t 0 ^ ^ 0
0 & & ^
^ & & & ^
0 . . . 0 u
1d
t 0
2
6
6
6
6
6
6
4
3
7
7
7
7
7
7
5
|{z}
A
ei
x
2ei
x
3ei
^
^
x
lei
2
6
6
6
6
6
6
4
3
7
7
7
7
7
7
5
1
0
^
^
0
2
6
6
6
6
6
6
4
3
7
7
7
7
7
7
5
|{z}
B
ei
u
2i
u
2d

0
x
2ei
x
2d
x
3ei
x
3d
^
x
l1ei
x
l1d
2
6
6
6
6
6
6
4
3
7
7
7
7
7
7
5
|{z}
g
i
x
id
;x
kei
fx
1ei
_ x
1ei
k
xi
x
1ei
X
j2N
i
a
ij
tx
1ei
x
1ej
: fx
1ei
27
Remark 4.2. The matrix form A
ei
for the driven subsystem (27) has the same structure as for
the tracking case of nonholonomic system in chained form in Lefeber et al. [39]. The control
objective will not only stabilize the overall system K-exponentially (27) but will also synchronize
all the error states to a common value, in particular objectives (17) and (18) must be satised.
Before carrying out the design of the coordinated controller for u
2i
, we rst give the
following knowing lemma, which proof can be found in Lefeber et al. [39].
Lemma 4.2. Consider the driven subsystem in Eq. (27), with fx
1ei
and x
1ei
being set to zero.
Let x
ei
x
2ei
; x
3ei
; . . . ; x
lei
>
then Eq. (27) rewrites
_ x
ei
A
ei
x
ei
B
ei
u
2i
u
2d
28
Knowing that u
1d
satises the condition of persistency of excitation, the linear time-varying system
(28) is said to be uniformly completely controllable and uniformly completely observable. Moreover,
if the control input u
2i
is chosen as
u
2i
u
2d
k
i
y2
x
2ei
k
i
y3
u
1d
tx
3ei
k
i
y4
x
4ei
u
2d
K
i
tx
ei
29
where k
yk
i
(k=2,y,l) are such that the matrix A
ei
BK
i
(t) is an exponential stable matrix, then the
closed-loop system (28)(29) is globally exponentially stable.
To ensure the solutions synchronization of Eq. (28) to zero, the control u
2i
in Eq. (29)
must be changed to account for the communication topology constraints among robots for
which tracking error dynamics can be written as Eq. (27). This motivates the statement of
the following theorem:
Theorem 4.3. Consider the subsystem of the rst equation of Eq. (27), suppose that the
Laplacian of the graph that captures the communication constraints among the robots
satises the persistency excitation condition (6). Under the assumption that u
1d
is persistently
exciting, the coordinated controller u
2i
given below:
u
2i
u
2d
K
i
tw
i
t
_ w
i
t A
ei
B
ei
K
i
tw
i
tB
ei
K
i
tx
ei
w
i

X
j2N
i
a
ij
tw
j
w
i
x
ei
x
ej
g
i
x
di
; x
kei
fx
1ei
30
makes
lim
t-1
x
ei
x
ej
0; 8iaj; i 2 2; . . . ; n 31
In particular the objectives (17)(18) are achieved.
Proof. Dene the concatenated vectors x
e
x
e1
>
; x
e2
>
; . . . ; x
en
>
>
; w
w
>
1
; w
>
2
; . . . ;
w
n
>
; u u
21
u
2d
; u
22
u
2d
; . . . ; u
2n
u
2d
>
and
Gx
e
; x
d
g
1
x
1d
; x
ke1
>
; . . . ; g
n
x
nd
; x
ken
>
>
, subsystem (27) and the control input (30)
can be written in the following compact form:
_ x
e
I
n
A
ei
x
e
I
n
B
ei
u Gx
e
; x
d
fx
1e
32
u I
n
K
i
tw
33
_ w
I
n
A
ei
B
ei
K
i
tw
I
n
B
ei
K
i
tw
Lt I
n
x
e
w
Gx
e
; x
d
fx
1e
34
where denotes the Kronecker product and I is the n-dimensional identity matrix. Let the
change of variable proposed in Scardovi and Sepulchre [41], Z x
e
w
then with the control

input (33), system (32), the driving subsystem (27) and the dynamic of the new variable Z rewrite
_ x
e
I
n
A
ei
B
ei
K
i
tx
e
I
n
B
ei
K
i
tZ Gx
e
; x
d
fx
1e
_ Z I
n
A
ei
B
ei
K
i
tZLt I
n
Z
_ x
1e
fx
1e
35
Denote
~
A
e
I
n
A
ei
B
ei
K
i
t I
n

~
A
ei
;
~
B
e
I
n
B
ei
K
i
t and
~
Lt Lt I
n
, then
the third equation of Eq. (35), can be rewritten as
_ Z
~
A
e
Z
~
LtZ 36
note according to Lemma 4.2, the matrix
~
A
e
is stable. The coordinate transformation used in the
proof of Theorem 4.1 can no longer be applied in this case, since the matrix
~
A
e
is time varying.
To show lim
t-1
~
LtZ 0, we propose the following change of variable Z J
>
I
n
Z, where
J 1
n
=

n
p
; U. The system (36) in the new coordinates is expressed as
_
Z J
>
I
n
I
n

~
A
ei
ZJ
>
I
n
Lt I
n
Z
J
>
I
n
I
n

~
A
ei
J I
n
ZJ
>
I
n
Lt I
n
J I
n
Z
J
>

~
A
ei
J I
n
ZJ
>
Lt I
n
J I
n
Z
J
>
J
~
A
ei
ZJ
>
LtJ I
n
Z I
n

~
A
ei
Z
0 0
0 Lt
" #
I
n
!
Z 37
Dene Z Z
>
1
; Z
>
2

>
2 R
nl1
and Z
2
2 R
n1l1
, Eq. (37) can be split into two equations as
follows:
_
Z
1

~
A
e1
Z
1
38
_
Z
2
I
n1

~
A
ei
Z
2
Lt I
n1
Z
2
39
From Eq. (38), Z
1
converges uniformly to zero due to the fact that the matrix A
e1
(t) is
uniformly stable. A direct application of Lemma 2.3 to Eq. (39) leads to the conclusion that
Z
2
uniformly exponentially converges to zero as time goes to innity and consequently
lim
t-1
LtZ 0 which is equivalently the same to write lim
t-1
LtZ 0. Since the matrix
~
A
e
t is uniformly stable, then the solutions of Eq. (36) converge uniformly asymptotically to
zero. With this result and the fact that fx
1e
exponentially converges to zero, the rst
equation of Eq. (35) can be seen as a nominal system (i.e., _ x
e
A
ei
B
ei
K
i
t Ix
e
)
affected by two perturbing terms that vanish uniformly asymptotically as t-1. To be able
to show that x
e
-0 as t-1, we arrange Eq. (33) such that it can be written as a cascaded of
two subsystems, then in order to prove that x
e
n
=0 is a globally uniformly asymptotically
stable equilibrium for this cascade structure, we apply the technical tool from Panteley and
Loria [40] which gives sufcient conditions for uniform global asymptotic stability of general
non-linear time-varying systems in cascade. Without losing generality, system (33) can be
arranged such that it can be written as follows:
_ x
e
A
e
x
e
F
e
x
e
c 40
_
c Ftc 41
where we have dened a new state c Z; x
1e
>
. F
e

~
B
e
; Gx
e
; x
d
and Ft
~
A
e
~
Lt
0
0
K
x
Lt
. To conclude about the global uniform asymptotic stability of Eqs. (40)
and (41), we proceed to verify the three assumptions in Panteley and Loria [40].
1. The nominal system of Eq. (40) _ x
e
A
e
x
e
is globally uniformly asymptotically stable,
from converse Lyapunov theory, there exists a positive denite and radially unbounded
Lyapunov function such that
V
35
x
>
e
Ptx
e
where P(t) is such that
_
Pt PtA
e
t A
>
e
tPt Qt and Qt is a positive
matrix. It is easy to verify that
@V
35
@x
Jx
e
Jr2V
35
@V
35
@x
r2
V
35
p
where we used J J for the Euclidian norm. Consequently Assumption (A1) in Panteley
and Loria [40] is satised.
2. The interconnected term F
e
is independent of x
e
n
and satises the following inequality:
J
~
B
e
; Gx
e
; x
d
JrJ
~
B
e
; 0J JGx
e
; x
d
JrJ
~
B
e
; 0J
X
n
i1
Jg
i
x
id
; x
kei
J
and
X
n
i1
Jg
i
x
id
; x
kei
Jr
2
X
n
i1
0
x
2ei
^
x
n1ei
2
6
6
6
6
4
3
7
7
7
7
5
2
n
0
x
2d
^
x
n1d
2
6
6
6
6
4
3
7
7
7
7
5
2
0
B
B
B
B
@
1
C
C
C
C
A
v
u
u
u
u
u
u
u
t
42
since x
2d
, x
3d
, y, x
nd
are bounded and therefore the second norm of inequality (42)
is bounded by a positive constant M, then using the fact that for any a; b 2 R
a
2
b
2
p
ra b we have
X
n
i1
Jg
i
x
id
; x
kei
Jr

2n
p
M
2
p
Jx
e
J
Using the denition of the Euclidian matrix norm, it can be easily veried that due to the fact
that u
1d
is bounded then there exists a bound N40 such that J
~
B
e
; 0JrN, nally we have
J
~
B
e
; Gx
e
; x
d
JrN
2n
p
M
2
p
Jx
e
J 43
Hence Assumption (A2) in Panteley and Loria [40] is satised with y
2
N
2n
p
M and
y
1

2
p
.
3. The driving subsystem (41) is globally exponentially stable according to Lemma 2.3 and
Theorem 4.1, the perturbing signals c therefore satises the following integral condition:
Z
1
t
0
JctJ dtrJFtJJct
0
J
Hence Assumption (A3) of Theorem 2 in Panteley and Loria [40] is satised with
kJct
0
J JFtJJct
0
J.
Having veried all the conditions in Panteley and Loria [40], we conclude that the origin
x
e
; c 0; 0 is globally uniformly stable equilibrium of Eqs. (40) and (41), which
Remark 4.3. It is worth noticing that controllers (23) and (30) responsible for the group
movement and the tracking problem of the robots are decentralized which contain relative
information between neighboring vehicles and the desired trajectory this particularity
distinguishes the cooperative control law from the tracking control law for a single mobile
robot presented in Lefeber et al. [39].
4.2. Observer-based coordination control
Now we explore the situation where only the positions of the robots are available for
measurement, our objective is to design a globally exponentially convergent observer for
Eq. (22) to ensure synchronization of all the error states x
1e
and x
e
n
. By dening the
measurable output y x
1ei
; x
lei
>
, system (27) rewrites
_ x
1ei
u
1i
u
1d
_ x
ei
A
ei
x
ei
B
ei
u
2i
u
2d
g
i
x
id
; x
kei
fx
1ei
y C
x
1ei
x
ei
" #
; C diag1; 0; . . . ; 1 44
As discussed in Lemma 4.2, with the output y, system (27) is uniformly completely
observable, since the error states x
kei
; 8k 2; . . . l1 cannot be measured, the decentralized
controller (33)(34) is no longer implementable. We need to nd an observer, such that the
unmeasurable part of the states of Eq. (44) can be reconstructed, the synchronizing
controller (33)(34) can therefore be implemented by using those states estimate. Like the
following
u
1i
u
1d
k
xi
x
1ei
X
j2N
i
a
ij
tx
1ei
x
1ej
u
2i
u
2d
K
i
tw
i
t
_ w
i
t A
ei
B
ei
K
i
tw
i
tB
ei
K
i
t ^ x
ei
w
i

X
j2N
i
a
ij
tw
j
w
i
^ x
ei
^ x
ej
g
i
x
di
; ^ x
kei
fx
1ei
45
where the estimate ^ x
ei
is generated by the observer
_
^ x
ei
A
ei
^ x
ei
B
ei
u
2i
u
2d
P
i
Lx
ei
^ x
ei
46
with L is a projection vector such that L 0; 0; . . . ; 1. K
i
is an arbitrary stabilizing
feedback matrix and P is an observer matrix. We are now ready to announce the main
result of this section in the following theorem:
Theorem 4.4. Consider the coordination subsystem (44), where we suppose that only the error
states x
1ei
and x
lei
n
are available for measurements. Assume that the graph communication
topology is uniformly connected, that is that the weighted graph Laplacian satises the
persistency excitation condition (6). Assume also that u
1d
(t) is persistently exciting and that
x
2d
,y,x
(l1)d
are bounded. Then for any gain matrix K
i
and P
i
such that the matrices
(A
ei
B
ei
K
i
) and A
ei
P
i
L are stable, the decentralized controller (45)(46) resolves
objectives (16)(18).
Proof. Like in the previous proof, we dene an estimate stack vector ^ x
e
^ x
e1
>
;
^ x
e2
>
; . . . ; ^ x
en
>
>
. Let the new error state dened as Z ^ x
e
w and the error estimates as
~ x
e
x
e
^ x
e
. In the new coordinates by letting P P
i
L I and
~
P A
ei
P
i
L I,
system (44) in closed loop with the control (45)(46) rewrites
_ x
e

~
A
e
x
~
B
e
Z ~ x
e
Gx
e
; x
d
fx
1e
_ Z
~
A
e
Z
~
LtZ P~ x
e
G ^ x
e
; x
d
fx
1e
_
~ x
e

~
P~ x
e
Gx
e
; x
d
fx
1e
_ x
1e
fx
1e
47
System (47) is a cascade of three interconnected subsystems. Suppose that ~ x
e
0 then the
third equation in Eq. (47) disappears and the system (47) is nothing but the cascade (35)
analyzed in the proof of Theorem 4.3. This allows to conclude about objectives (16)(18).
To show that the error estimates ~ x
e
converge exponentially to zero, consider the vector
state W x
e
; ~ x
>
. We can view the rst and the third dynamic in Eq. (47) as a single
dynamic in terms of the vector state W, together with the Z-dynamic, system (47) is
rewritten as
_
W
~
A
e

~
B
e
0
~
P
!
W
~
B
e
0
!
Z
G
G

fx
1e
_ Z
~
A
e
~
LtZ P0; 1WG ^ x
e
; x
d
fx
1e
_ x
1e
fx
1e
48
It can be seen from Lefeber et al. [39] that
~
A
e
0
~
B
e
~
P
is an exponentially stable matrix, it is
straightforward to conclude that W is input-to-state stable (ISS) [47] with respect to the
inputs Z; fx
1e
. It is also easy to show that Z is ISS with respect to the inputs W; fx
1e
.
A direct application of the small gain theorem [57,58] and since fx
1e
exponentially
converges to zero, we conclude that W and consequently the error estimate ~ x
e
converge to
zero as time goes to innity. This completes the proof. &
5. Stability analysis of the closed-loop system with communication delay
The cooperative control law presented so far did not consider communication delay in
the design and in the analysis. In practice however, there are always time delay in
broadcasting information. For the simplicity of the analysis, we only consider the case of
the decentralized cooperative state feedback developed in Theorem 4.3. However, the
analysis can be easily extended to the observer-based coordination control. Therefore for
Theorem 4.3, we have the following delay version result.
Theorem 5.1. Consider the ith error tracking system represented by Eq. (22), under the
assumption that the inter-connection among mobile robots is represented by a connected
graph G for all tZt
0
and whose corresponding weighted Laplacian matrix L(t) is persistency
exciting. The delayed version of the cooperative controllers (23) and (30) given as follows:
u
1i
u
1d
k
xi
x
1ei
X
j2N
i
a
ij
tx
1ei
ttx
1ej
tt; 8iaj
u
2i
u
2d
K
i
tw
i
t
_ w
i
t A
ei
B
ei
K
i
tw
i
tB
ei
K
i
tx
ei
w
i

X
j2N
i
a
ij
tw
j
ttw
i
tt
x
ei
ttx
ej
tt g
i
x
di
; x
kei
fx
1ei
49
where t40 is the communication delay. The cooperative control version (49) makes the
objectives (17)(18) hold if and only if there exists positive time-varying matrices P
1
t
t
and P
2
t
t which satisfy the solutions of a certain Riccati differential equation.
Proof. Applying the control input u
1i
and u
2i
given in Eq. (49) to Eq. (22) yields the
following closed-loop system:
_ x
e
I
n
A
ei
B
ei
K
i
tx
e
I
n
B
ei
K
i
tZ Gx
e
; x
d
fx
1e
tt
_
Z
1

~
A
e1
Z
1
_
Z
2
I
n1

~
A
ei
t
|{z}
Yt
Z
2
tLt I
n1
|{z}
Ot
Z
2
tt
_ x
1e
K
x
x
1e
Ltx
1e
tt : fx
1e
tt 50
Global uniform asymptotic stability of Eq. (50) is proven using the concept of stability of
cascaded systems and goes the same line reasoning as in the proof of Theorem 4.3. To be
able to use the technical tool given in Panteley and Loria [40], we rst need to show that
the solutions of the last two equations of Eq. (50) converge asymptotically to zero. The
methodology hereafter is presented for the third equation of Eq. (50) and applies step by
step, mutatis mutandis, to the last equation that describes the dynamic of x
1e
.
Using the NewtonLeibniz formula, we have
Z
2
tt Z
2
t
Z
t
tt
_
Z
2
l dl 51
Substituting
_
Z
2
t into Eq. (51) we obtain
Z
2
tt Z
2
t
Z
t
tt
YlZ
2
lOlZ
2
lt dl
Substituting Z
2
tt back into the third equation of Eq. (50) leads to the following system:
_
Z
2
t YtCtZ
2
t Ot
Z
t
tt
YlZ
2
l dlOt
Z
t
tt
OlZ
2
lt dl 52
to show the stability of the delayed system (52), we consider the following Lyapunov
Krasovskii functional
V
K
t; Z
2
Z
>
2
P
1
t
tZ
2
kJZ
2
J
2
where P
1
t
t is a bounded positive time-varying matrix and k is a positive constant. The
time derivative of V
K
t; Z
2
along the solutions of Eq. (52) is given by
_
V
K
t; Z
2
Z
>
2

_
P
1
t
t P
1
t
t kIYtOt YtOt
>
P
1
t
t kIZ
2
2Z
>
2
P
1
t
t kIOt
Z
t
tt
YlZ
2
l dl2Z
>
2
P
1
t
t kIOt
Z
t
tt
OlZ
2
lt dl
53
We have the following inequalities from Mahmoud [59]:
2Z
>
2
P
1
t
t kIOt
Z
t
tt
YlZ
2
l dl
r
Z
t
tt
Z
>
2
P
1
t
t kIOtOt
>
P
1
t
t kIZ
2
dl
Z
t
tt
Z
2
l
>
YlYl
>
Z
2
l dl
rtZ
>
2
P
1
t
t kIOtOt
>
P
1
t
t kIZ
2

Z
t
tt
Z
2
l
>
YlYl
>
Z
2
l dl
Since the matrix
~
A
ei
is a stable and bounded matrix then there exists a constant g
~
A
e
such
that g
~
A
e
Zsup
t2R
JYtJ. The above inequality, rewrites
2Z
>
2
P
1
t
t kIOt
Z
t
tt
YlZ
2
l dlrtZ
>
2
P
1
t
t kIOtOt
>
P
1
t
t kIZ
2
g
2
~
A
e
g
P
1
t
Z
0
t
Z
2
t l
>
P
1
t
t l kIZ
2
t l
>
dl 54
where g
P
1
t
sup
t2R
P
1
t
t kI. Similarly we also have
2Z
>
2
P
1
t
t kIOt
Z
t
tt
OlZ
2
lt dlrtZ
>
2
P
1
t
t kIOtOt
>
P
1
t
t kIZ
2
Z
t
tt
Z
2
lt
>
OlOl
>
Z
2
lt dlrtZ
>
2
P
1
t
t kIOtOt
>
P
1
t
t kIZ
2
L
2
M
g
P
1
t
Z
0
t
Z
2
lt
>
P
1
t
t lt kIZ
2
lt dl 55
From Eqs. (54) and (55), since V
K
t; Z
2
Z
>
2
P
1
t
t kIZ
2
then in the light of
Razumikhim theorem [60] if for any a41 we have
V
K
t l; Z
2
t loaV
K
t; Z
2
therefore Eq. (53) rewrites

_
V
K
t; Z
2
rZ
>
2

_
P
1
t
t P
1
t
t kIYtOt YtOt
>
P
1
t
t kIZ
2
2tZ
>
2
P
1
t
t kIOtOt
>
P
1
t
t kIZ
2
ta
L
2
M
g
P
1
t
g
2
~
A
e
g
P
1
t
!
V
K
t; Z
2
56
To ensure that the time derivative of the Lyapunov Krasovskii V
K
t; Z
2
is negative denite
the matrix P
1
t
t must satisfy the following Riccati differential equation:
_
P
1
t
t P
1
t
t kIYtOt YtOt
>
P
1
t
t kI
2tP
1
t
t kIOtOt
>
P
1
t
t kI ta
L
2
M
g
P
1
t
g
2
~
A
e
g
P
1
t
!
I
Consequently, there exists a constant p
1
such that
_
V
K
t; Z
2
rp
1
JZ
2
J
2
; 8tZ0
A direct application of the Razumikhim theorem implies that the solutions of the third
equation of Eq. (50) asymptotically converge to zero. Similar result can be found regarding
the last equation of Eq. (50) in that the time-varying matrix Yt is replaced by the
constant matrix K
x
and the bounded positive denite matrix P
1
t
t is replaced by P
2
t
t.
Consequently the asymptotic convergence of the state x
1e
is also guaranteed. This
Remark 5.1. Theorem 5.1 shows that the proposed cooperative control laws robustly
solved the objectives (16) and (17) in the presence of communication delay. The time delay
t is assumed to be nite constant. However, with the condition given in terms of the
solutions of Reccati differential equation, allows to consider a fast time-varying delay in
the communication channel.
6. Numerical simulations
The numerical simulation results that are given in this section correspond to a team of
six car-like mobile robots that are being controlled by the two control laws presented
above, namely the coordinated state-feedback control law which result is presented in
Theorem 4.3 and the observer-based coordination controller for which main result is given
in Theorem 4.4. The results shown below are conducted on identical models for a car-like
mobile robot with motorized front wheel and two passive rear-wheel (see Fig. 1(a)).
The kinematic model for this kind of vehicles is derived under the assumption that the
motion of the vehicles is done on a horizontal plane without rolling slippage. Let
X
i
x
i
; y
i
; y
i
; a
i
>
be the conguration states of the car-like robot i where (x
i
, y
i
) are the
coordinates of a point C located at mid-distance of the rear wheels, y
i
is the orientation of
the vehicle and a
i
is the steering angle of the front wheel as shown in Fig. 2(a). The
kinematic of the car-like vehicle is given by Tayebi et al. [34]
_ x
i
v
i
cosy
i
; _ y
i
v
i
siny
i
;
_
y
i

v
i
d
i
tana
i
; _ a
i
o 57
where v
i
and o
i
are the linear and angular velocity of the robots front wheel respectively.
To be able to apply the coordinated control law (23) and (30) or Eq. (45), we use the
following locally dened transformation in order to convert Eq. (57) in the chained form (14):
v
i

u
1i
cosy
i
; o
i

3 sin
2
y
i
siny
i
d cos
2
y
i
u
1i
d cos
2
a
i
cos
3
y
i
u
2i
x
1i
x
i
; x
2i

tana
i
dcos
3
y
i
; x
3i
tany
i
; x
4i
y
i
C
x
i
y
i
Y
X
d
i
Fig. 2. (a) Conguration states of the car-like robot, (b) the Desired formation shape.
the above transformation is singular only if y
i
p=2. In practice, this singularity can be
avoided by applying an open-loop action for an arbitrary small time to move the robot away
form this singular conguration then switch to the decentralized controller. This
transformation allows one to write Eq. (57) in the following chained form:
_ x
1i
u
1i
; _ x
2i
u
2i
; _ x
3i
x
2i
u
1i
; _ x
4i
x
3i
u
1i
58
A group of six mobile robots in formation requires six individual reference trajectories. To set
up the reference trajectories appropriately, we generate the desired trajectory for the center of
the group then the six real trajectories are constructed based on the offsets (L
xi
, L
yi
) dened in
Eqs. (16) and (17). The center of the groups trajectory is given by
_ x
1d
u
1d
; _ x
2d
u
2d
; _ x
3d
x
2d
u
1d
; _ x
4d
x
3d
u
1d
59
Assume that the graph that captures the communication network among the vehicles is
uniformly connected and the communications among the vehicles are bidirectional. This means
that the ith car-like vehicle can receive information from the jth vehicle and in turn vehicle j
broadcasts its state information back to vehicle i. The communication topology among vehicles
is time varying as shown in Fig. 3 (the switching period T is xed to 10 s). In the simulations, we
consider that the desired formation pattern is dened by (L
x1
, L
y1
)=(3, 0), (L
x2
, L
y2
)=
(15,70), (L
x3
, L
y3
)=(8,50), (L
x4
, L
y4
)=(5,70), (L
x5
,L
y5
)=(10,70), (L
x6
, L
y6
)=(10,50)
(see Fig. 2(b)). The desired trajectory for the formation centroid is generated with zero initial
conditions x
1d
0 x
2d
0 x
3d
0 x
4d
0 0 and under the following steering sinusoidal
inputs u
1d
=1cos(0.1t) and u
2d
=cos(0.5t). Note that the reference input u
1d
is uniformly
P
B
M
D
C
L
P
B
M
D
C
L
P
B
M
D
C
L
P
B
M
D
C
L
Fig. 3. Time-varying communication topology. P,B,C,y,M,L are label for vertices representing each mobile
robot. (a) Graph G
1
for t 2 0; T=4. (b) Graph G
2
for t 2 T=4; T=2. (c) Graph G
3
for t 2 T=2; 3T=2. (d) Graph
G
4
for t 2 3T=2; T.
20 0 20 40 60 80 100
30
20
10
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
y

[
m
]
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5 5
20
15
10
5
0
5
10
Time [s]
robot 1 robot 2
robot 3 robot 4
robot 5 robot 6
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50
25
20
15
10
5
0
5
10
15
20
Time [s]
x
4
e
i
,

i

=

1
,
,

6

[
m
]
robot 1 robot 2
robot 3 robot 4
robot 5 robot 6
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
Time [s]
1

2

3
4

5

6
x
1
e
i
,

i

=

1
,
,
6
i

=

t
a
n
1

(
x
3
i
)
x [m]
Fig. 4. Vehicles movement in the XY-plane, the time evolution of the orientation and the vehicles error positions, using the control design (30).
J
.
G
h
o
m
m
a
m
e
t
a
l
.
/
J
o
u
r
n
a
l
o
f
t
h
e
F
r
a
n
k
l
i
n
I
n
s
t
i
t
u
t
e
3
4
8
(
2
0
1
1
)
9
7
3
9
9
8
9
9
3
bounded in t and continuously differentiable thus satisfying the condition of persistence of
excitation with r=0. Fig. 4(a) shows the movement of the robots in a XY-plane along a
sinusoidal trajectories as they converge to their desired formation shape. Due to the fact that
the communication topology is time varying, it can be seen from this plot that the XY-position
undergoes some slight uctuations when the communication topology conguration changes to
maintain the formation. The trajectory tracking errors are plotted in Fig. 4(b) and (c) whereas
the robots orientations are depicted in Fig. 4(d), clearly these gures indicate that objectives
(16)(18) are satised with the cooperative controller (30).
For the observer-based coordination controller (45) and the estimate model (46), we
continue to suppose that the graph G, that captures the communication topology among
vehicles, is uniformly connected and with its Laplacian graph veries the (PE)-condition.
The centroid of the formation shape basically follows a trajectory generated as before with
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50
4
3
2
1
0
1
2
3
4
5
Time [s]
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50
Time [s]
x
i
e
x
i
e

i

=

2
,
.
.
.
,
4
error estimate x
2e
error estimate x
3e
error estimate x
4e
15
10
5
0
5
10
15
i
,

i

=

2
,
,
4
Fig. 5. Time history of the error estimate ~ x
e2
and the error variable Z.
the desired input u
1d
and u
2d
. The observer gains P
i
, i=1,y,n for the output-feedback
observer are selected such that the matrix A
ei
P
i
L is stable. For clarity only the error
estimates of the rst robot along with the error variable Z are plotted in Fig. 5(a) and (b)
respectively. Clearly, these errors tend to zero asymptotically and this conrms the
statement of Theorem 4.4. In practice, the channels responsible for communication
between robots always exhibit time delay transmission, the control laws achieve the same
objectives according to Theorem 5.1. In simulations we assume that communication delay
is xed to t 0:3 s. Fig. 6 shows the time evolution of the state errors. The simulation
result meets Theorem 5.1.
7. Conclusion
This paper presented a cooperative control design method for a group of nonholonomic
systems represented by a chained form. Cooperative linear time-varying state and output-
feedback controllers with the aid of basic concepts from graph theory are proposed.
Stability of the formation is guaranteed under some necessary conditions of the reference
input and the uniform connectivity of the graph that captures the communication topology
among vehicles. We showed by means of cascade theory that the closed-loop cooperative
system either with state feedback or with output feedback is asymptotically stable.
Robustness of the control laws with respect to communication delay has been studied.
Numerical simulations show the effectiveness of the proposed cooperative controller.
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5 5
20
15
10
5
0
5
10
Time [s]
0 5 10 15 20 25 30
50
0
50
100
150
Time [s]
0 5 10 15 20 25 30
1
0.5
0
0.5
1
Time [s]
1

2

3

4

5

6
x
1
e
i
,

i

=

1
,
,
6
x
4
e
i
,

i

=

1
,
,
6

[
m
]
i

i

=

1
,
,
6
robot 1 robot 2 robot 3 robot 4 robot 5 robot 6
robot 1 robot 2 robot 3 robot 4 robot 5 robot 6
Fig. 6. Time history of the error variables with time delay.
Future work is an extension of the proposed controller to tackle the problem of
quantized time delay communication, to achieve a desired formation for a group of
nonholonomic robots in chained form.
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J a w h a r Gh o m m a m , O sc a r C a l v o a n d Al e j a n d r o R o z e n f e l d
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t h e t o p o l o g y o f t h e i n t e r - v e h i c l e c o m m u n i c a t i o n s n e t w o r k a r e
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sp e e d s o f a su b se t o f t h e o t h e r v e h i c l e s o f t h e g r o u p . We
i l l u st r a t e o u r d e si g n p r o c e d u r e f o r t h r e e u n d e r w a t e r m a r i n e
c r a f t . S i m u l a t i o n s r e su l t s a r e p r e se n t e d a n d d i sc u sse d .
Ke y w o r d s- F o r m a t i o n c o n t r o l , sy n c h r o n i z a t i o n , g r a p h t h e -
o r y , u n d e r w a t e r m a r i n e c r a f t s, p a t h f o l l o w i n g , L y a p u n o v t h e -
o r y .
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C o o p e r a t i n g m a r i n e v e h i c l e s m u st b e a b l e t o i n t e r a c t w i t h
e a c h o t h e r u si n g e i t h e r e x p l i c i t o r i m p l i c i t c o m m u n i c a t i o n
a n d f r e q u e n t l y b o t h . E x p l i c i t c o m m u n i c a t i o n c o r r e sp o n d s t o
a d e l i b e r a t e e x c h a n g e o f m e ssa g e s t h a t i s i n g e n e r a l m a d e
t h r o u g h a w i r e l e ss n e t w o r k . O n t h e o t h e r h a n d i m p l i c i t
c o m m u n i c a t i o n i s d e r i v e d t h r o u g h se n so r o b se r v a t i o n s t h a t
e n a b l e e a c h v e h i c l e t o e st i m a t e t h e st a t e s a n d t r a j e c t o r i e s o f
i t s t e a m m a t e s. F o r e x a m p l e , e a c h v e h i c l e c a n o b se r v e r e l a t i v e
st a t e ( p o si t i o n a n d o r i e n t a t i o n ) o f i t s n e i g h b o r s ( i m p l i c i t c o m -
m u n i c a t i o n ) , a n d t h r o u g h e x p l i c i t c o m m u n i c a t i o n e x c h a n g e
t h i s i n f o r m a t i o n w i t h t h e w h o l e t e a m i n o r d e r t o c o n st r u c t a
c o m p l e t e c o n f i g u r a t i o n o f t h e t e a m .
A t y p i c a l l e a d e r f o l l o w e r f o r m a t i o n c o n t r o l a p p r o a c h ( e . g . ,
[ 1 ] ) a ssu m e s o n l y o n e g r o u p l e a d e r w i t h i n t h e t e a m . I n t h i s
c a se , o n l y t h e g r o u p l e a d e r h a s t h e k n o w l e d g e o f g r o u p
t r a j e c t o r y i n f o r m a t i o n , w h i c h i s e i t h e r p r e p r o g r a m m e d i n
t h e g r o u p l e a d e r o r p r o v i d e d t o t h e g r o u p l e a d e r b y a n
e x t e r n a l so u r c e . T h e f o r m a t i o n i s t h e n b u i l t o n t h e r e a c t i o n
o f t h e o t h e r g r o u p m e m b e r s t o t h e m o t i o n o f t h e g r o u p
l e a d e r . T h e f a c t t h a t o n l y a si n g l e g r o u p l e a d e r i s i n v o l v e d
i n t h e t e a m i m p l i e s t h a t t h e l e a d e r f o l l o w e r a p p r o a c h i s
si m p l e t o i m p l e m e n t a n d u n d e r st a n d , a n d t h e r e q u i r e m e n t
o n c o m m u n i c a t i o n b a n d w i d t h i s r e d u c e d . T h i s i s, h o w e v e r , a
si n g l e p o i n t o f m a ssi v e f a i l u r e t y p e sy st e m b e c a u se t h e l o ss
o f t h e g r o u p l e a d e r c a u se s t h e e n t i r e g r o u p t o f a i l . An o t h e r
J . Gh o m m a m i s b o t h w i t h E c o l e Na t i o n a l e d ' I n g n i e u r s d e S f a x , M e c h a -
t r o n i c s a n d Au t o n o m o u s S y st e m s, ,B P W, 3 0 3 8 S f a x , T UNI S I A a n d t h e Un i -
v e r si t y o f O r l a n s, L a b o r a t o i r e d e Vi si o n e t R o b o t i q u e ,6 3 , Av . De L a t t r e d e
T a ssi g n y , 1 8 0 0 0 B o u r g e s, F R ANC E . j a w h a r . g h o m m a m @i e e e . o r g
O . C a l v o a n d A. R o z e n f e l d a r e b o t h w i t h Un i v e r si t y o f t h e B a l l e a r i c
I sl a n d s P a l m a d e M a l l o r c a , S p a i n o sc a r . c a l v o @u i b . e s
i ssu e w i t h t h e t y p i c a l l e a d e r f o l l o w e r a p p r o a c h i s t h e l a c k o f
i n t e r - v e h i c l e i n f o r m a t i o n f e e d b a c k t h r o u g h o u t t h e g r o u p .
I n o r d e r t o o v e r c o m e t h i s t y p e o f si n g l e p o i n t o f f a i l u r e
t e n d e n c y , m u c h r e se a r c h h a s b e e n f o c u si n g o n d e c e n t r a l i z e d
o r d i st r i b u t e d c o o p e r a t i v e c o n t r o l st r a t e g i e s w h e r e v e h i c l e
c o n t r o l l a w s a r e c o u p l e d a n d e a c h v e h i c l e m a k e s i t s o w n
d e c i si o n a c c o r d i n g t o t h e st a t e s o f i t s n e i g h b o r s ( e . g . , [ 2 ] - [ 4 ] ) .
T h i s a l l o w s t h e g r o u p t o c o n t i n u e o n t o a c h i e v e a n o b j e c t i v e
e v e n i n t h e p r e se n c e o f f a i l u r e o f a n y g r o u p m e m b e r .
I n sp i t e o f si g n i f i c a n t p r o g r e ss i n t h e se e x c i t i n g a r e a s,
m u c h w o r k r e m a i n s t o b e d o n e t o d e v e l o p st r a t e g i e s c a p a b l e
o f y i e l d i n g r o b u st p e r f o r m a n c e o f a f l e e t o f v e h i c l e s i n
t h e p r e se n c e o f c o m p l e x v e h i c l e d y n a m i c s, se v e r e c o m -
m u n i c a t i o n c o n st r a i n t s, a n d p a r t i a l v e h i c l e f a i l u r e s. T h e se
d i f f i c u l t i e s a r e sp e c i a l l y c h a l l e n g i n g i n t h e f i e l d o f m a r i n e
r o b o t i c s f o r t w o m a i n r e a so n s: i ) t h e d y n a m i c s o f m a r i n e
v e h i c l e s a r e o f t e n c o m p l e x a n d c a n n o t b e si m p l y i g n o r e d
o r d r a st i c a l l y si m p l i f i e d f o r c o n t r o l d e si g n p u r p o se s, a n d
i i ) u n d e r w a t e r c o m m u n i c a t i o n s a n d p o si t i o n i n g r e l y h e a v i l y
o n a c o u st i c sy st e m s, w h i c h a r e p l a g u e d w i t h i n t e r m i t t e n t
f a i l u r e s, l a t e n c y , a n d m u l t i - p a t h e f f e c t s.
I n sp i r e d b y t h e d e v e l o p m e n t s i n t h e f i e l d , w e st u d y c o o r -
d i n a t e d f o r m a t i o n c o n t r o l o f a g r o u p o f u n d e r w a t e r m a r i n e
v e h i c l e s su b j e c t t o c o m m u n i c a t i o n t o p o l o g y c o n st r a i n t s. I n
p a r t i c u l a r , w e st u d y c o o r d i n a t e d p a t h f o l l o w i n g o f 3 - DO F
m a r i n e v e h i c l e s. T h e m a r i n e v e h i c l e s c a n b e su r f a c e v e sse l s
o r u n d e r w a t e r v e h i c l e s m o v i n g w i t h c o n st a n t d e p t h . T h e
o b j e c t i v e i s t o c o n t r o l t h e v e h i c l e s a t c o n st a n t d e p t h su c h t h a t
a sy m p t o t i c a l l y t h e y c o n st i t u t e a d e si r e d f o r m a t i o n w h i c h t h e n
m o v e s a l o n g a g i v e n p a t h w i t h a d e si r e d sp e e d . T h i s c o n t r o l
o b j e c t i v e c a n b e a c h i e v e d b y , f i r st l y , m a k i n g e a c h v e h i c l e i n
t h e g r o u p f o l l o w a c o r r e sp o n d i n g d e si r e d p a t h a n d , se c o n d l y ,
b y c o o r d i n a t i n g t h e m o t i o n o f t h e v e h i c l e s a l o n g t h e se p a t h s
su c h t h a t t h e y a c h i e v e t h e d e si r e d i n t e r - v e h i c l e sp a c i n g o r
f o r m a t i o n p a t t e r n .
T h i s p a p e r i s a i m e d a t a c o m b i n a t i o n o f g r a p h t h e o r y
[ 6 ] a n d p a t h f o l l o w i n g a p p r o a c h e s [ 1 0 ] t o d r i v e a c o n t r o l
sy st e m f o r f o r m a t i o n c o n t r o l o f a g r o u p o f u n d e r w a t e r m a r i n e
v e h i c l e s. T h e c o o r d i n a t i o n t e c h n i q u e u se d i n [ 1 0 ] i s m o d i f i e d
so a s t o f o r c e t h e g e o m e t r i c e r r o r c o n v e r g i n g a sy m p t o t i c a l l y
t o z e r o . T h e c o n t r o l l e r i s d e r i v e d i n t w o st a g e s: f i r st , a p a t h
f o l l o w i n g c o n t r o l l a w i s u se d t h a t d r i v e s e a c h v e h i c l e t o i t s
a ssi g n e d p a t h r e g a r d l e ss t h e t e m p o r a l sp e e d p r o f i l e a d o p t e d .
T h i s i s d o n e b y m a k i n g e a c h v e h i c l e a p p r o a c h a g i v e n v i r t u a l
t a r g e t t h a t m o v e s a l o n g t h e p a t h w i t h i t s f o r w a r d sp e e d
c a n b e a ssi g n e d o n l i n e . S e c o n d , t h e sp e e d s o f t h e v i r t u a l
t a r g e t s a r e a d j u st e d so a s t o sy n c h r o n i z e t h e i r p o si t i o n , t h u s
a c h i e v i n g t h e c o o r d i n a t i o n o f t h e m a r i n e v e h i c l e s a l o n g t h e
p a t h s. S i m u l a t i o n r e su l t s t h a t d e m o n st r a t e t h e p e r f o r m a n c e
9 7 8 - 1 - 4 2 4 4 - 2 1 2 6 - 8 / 0 8 / $ 2 5 . 0 0 2 0 0 8 I E E E
o f t h e d e v e l o p e d f o r m a t i o n - c o n t r o l d e si g n a r e p r e se n t e d a n d
d i sc u sse d .
I I . P R O B L E M F O R M UL AT I O N
T h e c o m m o n a p p r o a c h t o c o o r d i n a t e d p a t h - f o l l o w i n g i s
t o d i v i d e t h e p r o b l e m i n t o i ) a m o t i o n c o n t r o l t a sk , t o b e
so l v e d i n d i v i d u a l l y f o r e v e r y v e h i c l e , e a c h h a v i n g a c c e ss t o
a se t o f l o c a l m e a su r e m e n t s, a n d i i ) a d y n a m i c a ssi g n m e n t
t a sk , c o n si st i n g i n sy n c h r o n i z i n g t h e p a r a m e t r i z a t i o n st a t e s
t h a t c a p t u r e t h e a l o n g p a t h d i st a n c e s b e t w e e n t h e v e h i c l e s.
T h i s st r a t e g y r e su l t s i n d e c o u p l i n g p a t h f o l l o w i n g a n d i n t e r -
v e h i c l e c o o r d i n a t i o n [ 1 3 ]
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t h e p r o p e l l e r ( F i ) a n d t h e a n g l e su st a i n e d b y t h e r u d d e r
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( l i n e a r ) su r g e ( f o r w a r d ) a n d sw a y ( si d e ) v e l o c i t i e s, r e sp e c -
t i v e l y , d e f i n e d i n t h e b o d y f i x e d f r a m e ( se e F i g . 2 ) . T h e
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m e a su r e d f r o m t h e i n e r t i a l - X b a x i s a n d r i s i t s y a w ( a n g u l a r )
v e l o c i t y . Assu m i n g t h a t h e a v e , p i t c h , a n d r o l l m o t i o n s c a n b e
n e g l e c t e d , t h e d y n a m i c s f o r a n e u t r a l l y b u o y a n t u n d e r w a t e r
v e h i c l e w i t h t h r e e p l a n e s o f sy m m e t r y i s e x p r e sse d b y t h e
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T o so l v e t h e p r o b l e m o f d r i v i n g a v e h i c l e a l o n g a d e si r e d
p a t h , w e a d o p t e t h e a p p r o a c h p r o p o se d b y [ 8 ] t h a t c o n si st s t o
f o r c e a n u n d e r a c t u a t e d m a r i n e v e h i c l e t o f o l l o w a p r e sc r i b e d
p a t h i n t h e se n se t h a t t h e v e h i c l e i s o n t h e p a t h , i t s t o t a l l i n e a r
v e l o c i t y i s t a n g e n t i a l t o t h e p a t h , a n d i t s f o r w a r d sp e e d c a n
b e a ssi g n e d o n - l i n e . T h i s r e su l t i s f a c i l i t a t e d b y 1 ) c h o o si n g
a n a p p r o p r i a t e b o d y - f i x e d f r a m e o r i g i n , 2 ) u si n g t h e p a t h
p a r a m e t e r d y n a m i c a s a n a d d i t i o n a l c o n t r o l t o m a k e t h e
sp e e d o f t h e v e h i c l e c o n v e r g e t o a n d t r a c k a d e si r e d sp e e d
a ssi g n m e n t .
P r o b l e m 1 ( P a t h - f o l l o w i n g ) : T h e p r i m a r y o b j e c t i v e i n
p a t h f o l l o w i n g i s t o e n su r e t h a t a v e h i c l e c o n v e r g e s t o
a n d f o l l o w s a d e si r e d g e o m e t r i c p a t h , w i t h o u t a n y t e m p o r a l
r e q u i r e m e n t s. T h e se c o n d a r y o b j e c t i v e i s t o e n su r e t h a t t h e
v e h i c l e c o m p l i e s w i t h a d e si r e d d y n a m i c b e h a v i o r s. I n t h i s
p a p e r , w e a d o p t e t h e a p p r o a c h p r e se n t e d b y [ 8 ] t o c o n st r u c t
c o n t r o l l a w f o r g u i d a n c e - b a se d p a t h f o l l o w i n g p r o b l e m .
T h e a l g o r i t h m i s b a se d o n t h e p o st u l a t i o n o f t w o f i c t i t i o u s
p a r t i c l e s, o n e o f t h e m b e l o n g i n g t o t h e p r e sc r i b e d p a t h a n d
t h e o t h e r c o r r e sp o n d i n g t o a p a r t i c l e o f t h e t h e AUV ( i n
p a r t i c u l a r i t c a n b e g e n e r a l l y a sso c i a t e d w i t h t h e AUV' s
c e n t r e o f b u o y a n c y ) . T h e n , c o n si d e r i n g t h e r e l a t i v e p o si t i o n s
o f t h e se p a r t i c l e s t h e m e t h o d d e t e r m i n e s: a ) t h e v e l o c i t y a n d
o r i e n t a t i o n t h a t t h e AUV' s p a r t i c l e m u st f o l l o w i n o r d e r t o
a p p r o a c h t h e p a t h p a r t i c l e , a n d b ) t h e p a t h p a r t i c l e p o si t i o n
r e f r e sh m e n t i n o r d e r n o t t o b e r e a c h e d b y t h e AUV' s p a r t i c l e .
9 7 8 - 1 - 4 2 4 4 - 2 1 2 6 - 8 / 0 8 / $ 2 5 . 0 0 2 0 0 8 I E E E
I n t h i s p a p e r , f o r r e a so n o f si m p l i c i t y , w e a ssu m e t h a t
a l l si g n a l s a r e a v a i l a b l e f o r m e a su r e m e n t , w e a l so a ssu m e
t h a t e a c h p a t h Q i , i > 3 i s r e g u l a r w i t h r e sp e c t t o t h e p a t h
p a r a m e t e r si .
C . C o o r d i n a t i o n
C o n si d e r n o w a g r o u p o f v e h i c l e s I = { 1 ,. . . , n } , e a c h
w i t h i t s o w n p a r a m e t e r i z e d p a t h ( x i ( c i ) , y ij ( ) ) , i C . T o
a c h i e v e c o o r d i n a t i o n b e t w e e n t h e e l e m e n t s o f t h e g r o u p , a
c o m m o n sp e e d p r o f i l e
Up L
h a s t o b e a ssi g n e d t o a l l t h e
p a t h s, so t h a t t h e v e h i c l e s m o v e a l o n g t h e m w h i l e h o l d i n g
a d e si r e d i n t e r - v e h i c l e f o r m a t i o n p a t t e r n . T h e p a r a m e t e r o i
o f e a c h v e h i c l e c a n b e se e n a s a c o o r d i n a t i o n st a t e su c h t h a t
c o o r d i n a t i o n e x i st s b e t w e e n t w o v e h i c l e s i a n d j i f a n d o n l y
i f ,i ( t ) =
c j
( t ) . T h e k e y i d e a i n d e si g n i n g t h e c o o r d i n a t i o n
c o n t r o l l e r i s t o i n t r o d u c e a c o n t r o l v a r i a b l e i n t h e f o r m o f
a c o r r e c t i o n t e r m Ud i t h a t i s a d d e d t o t h e d e si r e d sp e e d o f
e a c h v e h i c l e , y i e l d i n g
UP i
=U. i +
UP i
( 3 )
L e t 0 =
[ 0 1 , 2 ,. . . ,
o n j T b e t h e v e c t o r c o n t a i n i n g t h e
c o o r d i n a t i o n st a t e s o f t h e n v e h i c l e s, a n d J VE i d e n o t e t h e se t o f
v e h i c l e s t h a t v e h i c l e i e x c h a n g e s i n f o r m a t i o n w i t h o r , i n t h e
c a se o f u n i d i r e c t i o n a l c o m m u n i c a t i o n , r e c e i v e s i n f o r m a t i o n
f r o m . T h e c o o r d i n a t i o n p r o b l e m c a n b e f o r m u l a t e d a s f o l l o w s
[ 7 ] :
P r o b l e m 2 ( C o o r d i n a t i o n ) : C o n si d e r a se t o f v e h i c l e s
i J VAi w i t h d y n a m i c s ( 1 ) - ( 2 ) , t h e c o r r e sp o n d i n g p a t h s
( X d i ( i ) , Yd i ( O ) ) T
p a r a m e t e r i z e d
b y c i
a n d a f o r m a t i o n
sp e e d UL i ( t ) . Assu m e t h a t si a n d S j C X J a r e a v a i l a b l e
t o v e h i c l e i C J VF . De r i v e a c o n t r o l l a w f o r
Up i
su c h t h a t t h e
c o o r d i n a t i o n e r r o r s si - sj
a n d t h e f o r m a t i o n sp e e d t r a c k i n g
e r r o r s
T i
=
i - UL i ( 4 )
c o n v e r g e t o z e r o a s t - - > o c .
B e f o r e w e p r e se n t t h e so l u t i o n s t o a b o v e p r o b l e m s,
w e su m m a r i z e so m e b a c k g r o u n d m a t e r i a l . We st a r t w i t h a
b r i e f r e v i e w o f a l g e b r a i c g r a p h t h e o r y . S e e [ ] f o r d e t a i l s.
D. Gr a p h t h e o r y
I t i s n a t u r a l t o m o d e l i n f o r m a t i o n e x c h a n g e a m o n g v e h i -
c l e s b y d i r e c t e d o r u n d i r e c t e d g r a p h s. A d i g r a p h ( d i r e c t e d
g r a p h ) c o n si st s o f a p a i r ( Al , E ) , w h e r e Al i s a f i n i t e
n o n e m p t y se t o f n o d e s, a n d S C A' x A' i s a se t o f o r d e r e d
p a i r s o f n o d e s, c a l l e d e d g e s. An e d g e ( i , J ) i n a d i g r a p h
d e n o t e s t h a t v e h i c l e j c a n o b t a i n i n f o r m a t i o n f r o m v e h i c l e
i , b u t n o t n e c e ssa r i l y v i c e v e r sa . I n c o n t r a st , t h e p a i r s o f
n o d e s i n a n u n d i r e c t e d g r a p h a r e u n o r d e r e d , w h e r e a n e d g e
( i , j ) d e n o t e s t h a t v e h i c l e s i a n d j c a n o b t a i n i n f o r m a t i o n
f r o m o n e a n o t h e r . No t e t h a t a n u n d i r e c t e d g r a p h c a n b e
c o n si d e r e d a sp e c i a l c a se o f a d i g r a p h , w h e r e a n e d g e ( i , J )
i n t h e u n d i r e c t e d g r a p h c o r r e sp o n d s t o e d g e s ( i , j ) a n d
( j ,i ) i n t h e d i g r a p h . I f t h e r e i s a n e d g e f r o m n o d e i t o
n o d e j i n a d i g r a p h , t h e n i i s t h e p a r e n t n o d e , a n d j i s
t h e c h i l d n o d e . A d i r e c t e d p a t h i s a se q u e n c e o f e d g e s o f
t h e f o r m
( Vi 1 , Vi ) , ( Vi 2 ,Vi 3 ) . . .
w h e r e
Vi f
C N, i n a
d i g r a p h . An u n d i r e c t e d p a t h i n a n u n d i r e c t e d g r a p h i s d e f i n e d
a n a l o g o u sl y . I n a d i g r a p h , a c y c l e i s a d i r e c t e d p a t h t h a t st a r t s
a n d e n d s a t t h e sa m e n o d e . A d i g r a p h i s st r o n g l y c o n n e c t e d i f
t h e r e i s a d i r e c t e d p a t h f r o m e v e r y n o d e t o e v e r y o t h e r n o d e .
An u n d i r e c t e d g r a p h i s c o n n e c t e d i f t h e r e i s a p a t h b e t w e e n
a n y d i st i n c t p a i r o f n o d e s. A d i r e c t e d t r e e i s a d i g r a p h , w h e r e
e v e r y n o d e h a s e x a c t l y o n e p a r e n t e x c e p t f o r o n e n o d e , c a l l e d
t h e r o o t , w h i c h h a s n o p a r e n t , a n d t h e r o o t h a s a d i r e c t e d p a t h
t o e v e r y o t h e r n o d e . No t e t h a t i n a d i r e c t e d t r e e , e a c h e d g e
h a s a n a t u r a l o r i e n t a t i o n a w a y f r o m t h e r o o t , a n d n o c y c l e
e x i st s. I n t h e c a se o f u n d i r e c t e d g r a p h s, a t r e e i s a g r a p h
i n w h i c h e v e r y p a i r o f n o d e s i s c o n n e c t e d b y e x a c t l y o n e
p a t h . A d i r e c t e d sp a n n i n g t r e e o f a d i g r a p h i s a d i r e c t e d t r e e
f o r m e d b y g r a p h e d g e s t h a t c o n n e c t a l l o f t h e n o d e s o f t h e
g r a p h . A g r a p h h a s o r c o n t a i n s a d i r e c t e d sp a n n i n g t r e e i f
t h e r e e x i st s a d i r e c t e d sp a n n i n g t r e e b e i n g a su b se t o f t h e
g r a p h . No t e t h a t t h e c o n d i t i o n t h a t a d i g r a p h h a s a d i r e c t e d
sp a n n i n g t r e e i s e q u i v a l e n t t o t h e c a se t h a t t h e r e e x i st s a t l e a st
o n e n o d e h a v i n g a d i r e c t e d p a t h t o a l l o f t h e o t h e r n o d e s. I n
t h e c a se o f u n d i r e c t e d g r a p h s, h a v i n g a n u n d i r e c t e d sp a n n i n g
t r e e i s e q u i v a l e n t t o b e i n g c o n n e c t e d . H o w e v e r , i n t h e c a se o f
d i r e c t e d g r a p h s, h a v i n g a d i r e c t e d sp a n n i n g t r e e i s a w e a k e r
c o n d i t i o n t h a n b e i n g st r o n g l y c o n n e c t e d .
T h e a d j a c e n c y m a t r i x A =
[ a i j ]
C R n ,n o f a d i g r a p h i s
d e f i n e d a s a i i
=0 a n d
a i j
> 0 i f ( j , i ) C S w h e r e i t j . T h e
a d j a c e n c y m a t r i x o f a n u n d i r e c t g r a p h i s d e f i n e d a n a l o g o u sl y
e x c e p t t h a t
a i j
=
a j i ,Vi ,
j , si n c e ( j , i ) C S i m p l i e s
( i , j ) C S . L e t t h e m a t r i x L
[ l i j ]
C R n ,n b e d e f i n e d
a s
l i i a i
a n d
l i j =- a i j ,
w h e r e i t j . T h e m a t r i x
L sa t i sf i e s t h e f o l l o w i n g c o n d i t i o n s:
n
<i i <0 ,: j , l i j
=
0 , i
=1 . . .. ,n
J =1
( 5 )
F o r a n u n d i r e c t e d g r a p h , L i s c a l l e d t h e L a p l a c i a n m a t r i x
[ 5 ] , w h i c h i s sy m m e t r i c p o si t i v e se m i - d e f i n i t e . H o w e v e r , L
f o r a d i g r a p h d o e s n o t h a v e t h i s p r o p e r t y .
I I I . P R O B L E M S O L UT I O N
T h i s se c t i o n p r o v i d e s a so l u t i o n t o t h e c o o r d i n a t e d p a t h -
f o l l o w i n g p r o b l e m p o se d b e f o r e . We st a r t b y g i v i n g a k e y
r e su l t o n p a t h f o l l o w i n g .
A. P a t h - f o l l o w i n g c o n t r o l l e r
T h e c o n t e n t o f t h i s se c t i o n i s t a k e n f r o m [ 9 ] w i t h a sl i g h t
m o d i f i c a t i o n . C o n si d e r a n i d e a l a g e n t P i w i t h o u t d y n a m i c s,
w h o se p o si t i o n a n d sp e e d i n a p l a n e o f c o n st a n t d e p t h a r e
r e sp e c t i v e l y d e sc r i b e d i n t h e N- f r a m e b y t h e v e c t o r s P i
[ X i , y I '
a n d
P i =
[ = , ] T .
T h e
sp e e d
v e c t o r c a n a l so b e
c h a r a c t e r i z e d b y i t s m a g n i t u d e a n d o r i e n t a t i o n ( se e F i g . 3 )
Ud ,
=
l p l l 2
X d i
=
a r c t a n ( Y. )
. i
( 6 )
( 7 )
T h e o b j e c t i v e o f t h i s se c t i o n i s t o d e t e r m i n e t h e e x p r e ssi o n s
c o r r e sp o n d i n g t o t h e se v a r i a b l e s t o e n su r e t h e c o n v e r g e n c e
9 7 8 - 1 - 4 2 4 4 - 2 1 2 6 - 8 / 0 8 / $ 2 5 . 0 0 2 0 0 8 I E E E
T h e n , d i f f e r e n t i a t i n g ( l 1 ) w i t h r e sp e c t t o t i m e a l o n g t h e
t r a j e c t o r i e s o f E i
' i K R ( p $ i ( P p t p i ) +R p 1 T ( P p i _ P i ) )
I t sh o u l d b e n o t e d t h a t
R p i
c a n b e w r i t t e n a s
R p i
. j - X p C o S ( X p i ) - X p p si n ( X p i )
[
X P t si n ( X p i ) - X p t C o S ( X p i )
E
c o s( X p i ) si n ( X p i )
0
si n ( X p i ) C o S ( X p i ) L p i
a R p i S p i
a n d t h a t
P ~p i
=
R p i v p i
=
R p i
u
p
j
=
R p i
L UL i
+ Up i
( 1 2 )
I
- X p i ( 1
o
( 1 3 )
F i g . 3 . Na v i g a t i o n S c h e m e . [ 9 ]
o f t h e h y p o t h e t i c a l i d e a l a g e n t t o w a r d s a d e si r e d p a t h ( o n
t h e sa m e c o n st a n t d e p t h p l a n e ) a n d f o l l o w i t .
O f t e n i t i s r e q u i r e d t h a t t h e t r a c k i n g t a sk f u l f i l s c e r t a i n
t i m e sp e c i f i c a t i o n s. H o w e v e r , t h e se r e st r i c t i o n c a n b e l o o se n
u n d e r e x a c t i n g o p e r a t i o n a l c o n d i t i o n s. T h u s, i n t h e se si t -
u a t i o n s t h e g u i d a n c e o r n a v i g a t i o n b l o c k m u st p r i m a r i l y
e n su r e t h e g e o m e t r i c t r a c k i n g t a sk p o st p o n i n g , i f n e c e ssa r y ,
t h e t i m e r e q u i r e m e n t s. S u c h sp e c i f i c a t i o n s w o u l d r e su l t o f
se c o n d a r y i m p o r t a n c e . T h e n , i n o r d e r t o b e a b l e t o r e l a x t h e
p a t h f o l l o w i n g t i m e r e q u i r e m e n t s, t h e d e si r e d p a t h g e o m e t r i c
l o c u s i s c o n t i n u o u sl y p a r a m e t e r i z e d b y a t i m e d e p e n d a n t
sc a l a r v a r i a b l e - i
Ne x t , c o n si d e r a p a t h p a r t i c l e o f t h i s g e o m e t r i c l o c u s
w h o se i n st a n t a n e o u s p o si t i o n i n t h e N- f r a m e i s d e n o t e d
a s
P p i ( i )
=
[ p i ( i ) , Yp i ( i ) ]
T . T h e o r i e n t a t i o n o f t h i s
p a r t i c l e i s d e f i n e d b y i t s e v o l u t i o n o n t h e d e si r e d p a t h :
( 8 ) X p i
=
a r c t a n ( Yp i )
p i
w h e r e t h e n o t a t i o n x / = ,c ) p i ( c i ) h a s b e e n u t i l i z e d . At t h i s
p o i n t i t i s u se f u l t o d e f i n e a n a u x i l i a r y f r a m e a t t a c h e d t o t h e
p a t h p a r t i c l e a n d a l i g n e d w i t h t h e p a t h p a r t i c l e o r i e n t a t i o n ( P -
f r a m e ) . T h e a n g l e X p i , d e t e r m i n e t h e t r a n sf o r m a t i o n m a t r i x
f r o m t h e N- f r a m e t o t h i s l o c a l r e f e r e n c e f r a m e :
R p
= C o s( X p i )
-
si n ( X p i )
- si n ( X p i ) 1
C o s ( X p i )
j
( 9 )
I t sh o u l d b e n o t e d t h a t t h i s r o t a t i o n m a t r i x p r e se r v e s t h e
v e c t o r m a g n i t u d e s, w h i c h m e a n s t h a t R 1 - J R ' T
T h e n e w l o c a l f r a m e , a l l o w s t o e a si l y d e f i n e a p o si t i o n a l
e r r o r v e c t o r c o m p o se d b y t h e a l o n g - t r a c k e r r o r a n d t h e c r o ss
t r a c k e r r o r : E i
= [ si , e 1 i ' T . T h e n , i n t h e N- f r a m e t h i s e r r o r
v e c t o r c a n b e e x p r e sse d a s:
( 1 0 )
O n c e t h e e x p r e ssi o n o f t h e e r r o r v e c t o r o n t h e N- f r a m e i s
o b t a i n e d , i t i s st r a i g h t f o r w a r d t o d e f i n e t h e f o l l o w i n g p o si t i v e
d e f i n i t e L y a p u n o v f u n c t i o n :
2
( 1 4 )
p ~ R d =, R d
d
( 1 5 )
P d i Vd i = d i L
0 j ( 5
w h e r e
P 1 p i
a n d P i a r e t h e v e l o c i t i e s o f t h e p a t h p a r t i c l e a n d
o f t h e i d e a l a g e n t r e sp e c t i v e l y a n d R d i i s t h e r o t a t i o n m a t r i x
f o r m t h e N- f r a m e t o t h e P - f r a m e . T h i s l a st r o t a t i o n m a t r i x
p r e se n t s t h e sa m e f o r m t h a n
R p i
b u t i n v o l v i n g t h e a n g l e
X d i Ne x t , su b st i t u t i n g ( 1 3 ) , ( 1 4 ) a n d ( 1 5 ) i n ( 1 2 ) , i t c a n b e
r e w r i t t e n a s:
i = S i ( Ud i C O S ( X d i - X p i ) - Up i )
+e i Ud i si n ( X d i - X p i ) ( 1 6 )
No t i n g t h a t
Up i
= + y >u p t c i
=
Up i - t i ,
t h e n u si n g
r e l a t i o n s ( 3 ) a n d ( 4 ) i t i s st r a i g h t f o r w a r d t o w r i t e
Up i =Up i ( i
+ UL i ) ( 1 7 )
w h e r e X i T j i +
U1 p i .
E q u a t i o n ( 1 6 ) , r e w r i t e s
I : i = S i ( Ud i
C O S
( X d i - X p i ) - Up i ( t + UL i ) )
+e i Ud i si n ( X d i - X p i ) ( 1 8 )
H e n c e , UL i a n d X r i
=
X d i - X p i c a n b e c o n si d e r e d a s v i r t u a l
i n p u t s f o r d r i v i n g . E i t o z e r o , g i v e n t h a t Ud i > 0 . T h e n ,
c h o o se UL i a s
Ud i C O S ( X d i X p i ) +
( 1 9 )
w i t h t Yi > 0 c o n st a n t , a n d X r i a s t h e h e l m sm a n - l i k e
X r t =
a r c t a n ( C i ) ( 2 0 )
Ae t i
w h e r e Ae i i s a n u p p e r b o u n d e d p o si t i v e t i m e - v a r y i n g v a r i a b l e
c a l l e d l o o k a h e a d d i st a n c e [ 1 0 ] , u se d t o sh a p e t h e c o n v e r -
g e n c e o f si t o z e r o , g i v i n g
I ,i
=
Usi
- t 2
si Up i 1 i ( 2 1 )
e i
+
A2
T h e n , f r o m t h i s l a st e q u a t i o n i t i s st r a i g h t f o r w a r d t o se e t h a t
c h o o si n g t h e v e l o c i t y o f t h e i d e a l p a r t i c l e a s:
Ud i
=
- Ki C i +Ae i : Ki >
0
( 2 2 )
9 7 8 - 1 - 4 2 4 4 - 2 1 2 6 - 8 / 0 8 / $ 2 5 . 0 0 2 0 0 8 I E E E
I Yp i
1 ,
X n
X r i
t -
. . " a
*
, .
;
.
I I a
. l j
=
R
T
P i ( p p i p i ( - c 7 i ) )
l e a d s t o
VS i
s2 _ Ki e
2 _
S i i p i sUj
( 2 3 )
P r o p o si t i o n 1 : T h e c o n t r o l l a w ( 1 9 ) a n d ( 2 0 ) f o r e a c h
i d e a l a g e n t i so l v e r o b u st l y t h e p a t h - f o l l o w i n g p r o b l e m , t h a t
i s, a l l t h e st a t e s o f t h e c l o se d - l o o p i . e si a n d e i a r e b o u n d e d
a n d t h e p a t h - f o l l o w i n g e r r o r E i i s i n p u t - t o - st a t e st a b l e I S S
[ 1 5 ] w i t h r e sp e c t t o 7 i .
P r o o f : Wh e n a p p l y i n g ( 1 9 ) a n d ( 2 0 ) , t h e t i m e d e r i v a t i v e o f
t h e L y a p u n o v f u n c t i o n ( 1 1 ) i s a s f o l l o w s
V,S=- y s2 t i e 2 S p i 1 i
a p p l y i n g t h e Yo u n g ' s i n e q u a l i t y t o t h e l a st t e r m o f t h i s
e q u a t i o n g i v e s
si Up i r i
< Al i S i +
4 A
7 i
w i t h Al i a n a r b i t r a r y p o si t i v e c o n st a n t t h a t c a n b e se l e c t e d
su c h t h a t a i > Al i . E q u a t i o n ( 2 3 ) r e w r i t e s
V1 i
<
- ( ' y i Ai -
) sAi )
i e _ i
+
P " 7 1 i
T h a t i s t h e p a t h - f o l l o w i n g c l o se d - l o o p sy st e m i s I S S w i t h r ,i
a s i n p u t s a n d E i
=[ si , e ] T a s st a t e . U
B . C o o r d i n a t e d P a t h f o l l o w i n g
No t i c e t h a t i n e q u a t i o n ( 2 3 ) , i f t h e l a st t e r m i . e .
S i Ud i T / i
w a s z e r o , t h e n t h e p a t h f o l l o w i n g c l o se d sy st e m w o u l d b e
Un i f o r m l y Gl o b a l l y Asy m p t o t i c a l l y S t a b l e UGAS a s st a t e d
i n [ 9 ] . I n w h a t f o l l o w s w e t a k e a n a l t e r n a t i v e m e t h o d t o
e l i m i n a t e t h i s t e r m b y e x p l o i t i n g t h e sp e c i f i c f o r m o f t h e
c o o r d i n a t i o n c o n t r o l L y a p u n o v f u n c t i o n a s d e sc r i b e d i n [ 1 3 ] .
I n t h e se q u e l , w e se t
Up i =Ui ,Vi i . . . n ( 2 4 )
T h e r e f o r e , w e h a v e t h a t
Up i =
0 ,
r ,i
=
T j i a n d t h e c o o r d i n a -
t i o n d y n a m i c ,i c a n b e w r i t t e n a s
=UL +
T ( 2 5 )
h e r e
-
=
i i s t h e v e c t o r o f c o o r d i n a t i o n s st a t e s a n d
UL
=
[ UL i ] n x l 1 , T 1
=
[ T 1 i ] n x l .
L e t V,
=
y ,n
1
VF i a n d V7 S i =
- Wi .
T h e t i m e d e r i v a t i v e o f t h e L y a p u n o v f u n c t i o n V1 i s
w r i t t e n a s f o l l o w s
n
VT T = a Wi ( 2 6 )
i =l
w h e r e Q
=
[ Q 3 i ] n x l
a n d
/ i
=
si Up i .
I n w h a t
f o l l o w ,
w e
a ssu m e t h a t c o m m u n i c a t i o n b e t w e e n a g e n t s a r e b i - d i r e c t i o n a l
a n d t h e r e i s n o l o sse s o r t i m e d e l a y i n c o m m u n i c a t i o n . We
l e t
w i
= X - K1 ( L - / 3 ) ( 2 7 )
w h e r e K1 a n d K2 a r e d i a g o n a l p o si t i v e d e f i n i t e m a t r i c e s.
T h e c l o se d l o o p c o o r d i n a t i o n sy st e m i s g i v e n b y
UL ++- K 1 L 0 K1 Q
=
- ( Ki +K2 ) 7 +L
+3
( 2 9 )
T h e o r e m 1 : T h e c o n t r o l l a w ( 1 9 ) a n d ( 2 0 ) f o r e a c h i d e a l
a g e n t i t o g e t h e r w i t h ( 2 8 ) a n d ( 2 9 ) so l v e t h e c o o r d i n a t e d p a t h
f o l l o w i n g p r o b l e m i f a n d o n l y i f t h e c o m m u n i c a t i o n g r a p h
d e f i n e d b y t h e L a p l a c i e n L i s c o n n e c t e d . I n p a r t i c u l a r , t h e
p a t h f o l l o w i n g e r r o r , t h e c o o r d i n a t i o n e r r o r s i
-
,j
l a n d
t h e sp e e d t r a c k i n g e r r o r s ,i - Uc i
, c o n v e r g e a sy m p t o t i c a l l y
t o 0 a s t - - > o c .
P r o o f : C o n si d e r t h e a u g m e n t e d L y a p u n o v f u n c t i o n
g i v e n b y
V2 =V1 + 0 . 5 ( ( ~T +
7 T 7 )
( 3 0 )
w h e r e (
=
M T s, w i t h M t h e i n c i d e n t m a t r i x . T h e t i m e
d e r i v a t i v e o f ( 3 0 ) a l o n g t h e so l u t i o n s o f ( 2 9 ) a n d ( 2 3 ) g i v e s
n
V2 = - w i -
T Ki _ T
K2 7
i =l
( 3 1 )
w h e r e w e h a v e u se d t h e p r o p e r t y t h a t M T I =0 . B y u si n g
B a r b a l a t L e m m a [ 1 2 ] , w e h a v e t h a t t h e st a t e s ( r j , z ) a r e
b o u n d e d a n d t h e f o l l o w i n g l i m i t s h o l d
l i m r j ( t )
l i m z ( t )
t o o ) (
O n X 1
O n X 1
( 3 2 )
a n d c o n se q u e n t l y w e h a v e t h a t i
>
Up i ( t )
=
UL i , b y
c o n st r u c t i o n i t i s st r a i g h t f o r w a r d t o se e t h a t Q v a n i sh e s a s
t - o c , t h e n si n c e 7 =r 1 +
K,
( L -
/ 3 ) ,
t h e r e f o r e L 0 - >
0 [ n x 1 ]
i n a n o t h e r w o r d s
- i - -
i 0 a s t - >
o c , w h i c h
c o m p l e t e s
t h e
p r o o f . U
I V. F u z z Y P I C O NT R O L L AW S YS T E M S
We n o w l o o k a t t h e d e si g n o f t h e r e f e r e n c e si g n a l s r e q u i r e d
f o r g u i d i n g a f o r m a t i o n o f c o n t r o l l e d AUVs su c h t h a t t h e y
m e e t t h e c o o r d i n a t i o n b a se d p a t h f o l l o w i n g t a sk o b j e c t i v e s.
S i n c e w e r e l y o n t h e c o o r d i n a t i o n l a w s f r o m S e c t i o n I I I
t o e n su r e c o o r d i n a t e d p a t h f o l l o w i n g , w e c h o se t h e d e si r e d
r e f e r e n c e s f o r t h e su r g e , sw a y a n d r o l l v e l o c i t i e s f o r e a c h
AUV a c c o r d i n g t o
u i d = Ud , C O S ( X p ,
+
X r i _ b ,)
i ~~~~~
- i
e ,
+
A2 , C O S ( X d i -
v i = Ud i si n f ( X p i
+
X r i - ,i )
=
- Ki \ , e , + A2 ,
si n ( X d i -
Yi X p i - X r i
4 ,i )
b i )
w h e r e L i s t h e L a p l a c i a n m a t r i x o f t h e u n d e r l y i n g c o m m u n i -
c a t i o n g r a p h a s d e sc r i b e d i n se c t i o n D a n d 7 i s a n a u x i l i a r y
st a t e g o v e r n e d b y
=
- ( Kl
+K2 ) 7 +L 0 +/ 3 ( 2 8 )
( 3 3 )
T h e r e a r e t w o P I D c o n t r o l l e r s: a si m p l e P I g o v e r n i n g
t h e sp e e d o f t h e t h r u st e r s a n d a f u z z y P D g o v e r n i n g t h e
r u d d e r a n g l e . T h e sp e e d c o n t r o l l e r b u i l d s t h e e r r o r si g n a l
9 7 8 - 1 - 4 2 4 4 - 2 1 2 6 - 8 / 0 8 / $ 2 5 . 0 0 2 0 0 8 I E E E
b y su b t r a c t i n g t w o i n p u t si g n a l s: t h e d e si r e d sp e e d Ud i
c o m p u t e d b e f o r e a n d t h e a c t u a l m o d u l o o f t h e r e a l sp e e d o f
t h e v e h i c l e . T h e o u t p u t o f t h e c o n t r o l l e r i s t h e f o r c e a p p l i e d
t o t h e t h r u st e r s, w h i c h i s p r o p o r t i o n a l t o t h e sp e e d e r r o r a n d
i t s i n t e g r a l a s d e sc r i b e d b y t h e f o l l o w i n g e q u a t i o n .
F i
=
Kp , ( Ud i
u
,
+ v
T )
+T t , ( Ud i
U-
+
v 2 ) d t
( 3 4 )
O n t h e o t h e r h a n d , A f u z z y P D c o n t r o l l e r w a s c h o se n t o
c o n t r o l t h e r u d d e r a n g l e , m o d i f y i n g a n d m i n i m i z i n g h e a d i n g
e r r o r <) e i =
-
b i . T h e c o n t r o l l e r w o u l d r e j e c t p e r t u r b a -
t i o n s a n d p r e v e n t w i n d - u p e f f e c t s t h a n k s t o n o n l i n e a r i t i e s o f
t h e c o n t r o l su r f a c e sh o w n i n t h e ( F i g . 4 ) . T h e c o n t r o l l e r w a s
d e si g n e d w i t h t r i a n g u l a r m e m b e r sh i p f u n c t i o n s, M a m d a n i
i n f e r e n c e t e c h n i q u e s a n d b i se c t o r d e f u z z i f i c a t i o n st r a t e g y .
6 0
5 0
4 0
3 0
X 2 0
1 0
0
- 1 0
- 1 0 0 1 0 2 0 3 0 4 0 5 0 6 0
Y [ m ]
F i g . 6 . T h e t r a n si e n t b e h a v i o r o f 3 AUVs
o f t h e f o r m a t i o n AUVs a s t h e y a sse m b l e a n d m a i n t a i n a
v e r t i c a l l i n e f o r m a t i o n .
F i g u r e 7 i s a p l o t o f t h e v e h i c l e sp e e d s t h a t e n su r e
c o o r d i n a t i o n a l o n g t h e p a t h s. I n F i g u r e s 8 a n d 9 , t h e p r o p e l l e r
f o r c e F i a n d t h e r u d d e r a n g l e a i a r e p r e se n t e d f o r t h e
t h r e e AUVs. F i n a l l y F i g u r e 1 0 sh o w s t h e c o o r d i n a t i o n e r r o r s
1 - 7 2 , 7 2 - 7 3
a n d
7 3 - 1 g o
t o z e r o .
F i g . 4 . F u z z y C o n t r o l S u r f a c e
R a n g e s f o r h e a d i n g e r r o r s a n d i t s d e r i v a t i v e w e r e c h o se n
b e t w e e n l r a d a n d 0 . l r a d . s- 1 . T h e c o n t r o l o u t p u t si g n a l ,
t h e r u d d e r a n g l e , w a s l i m i t e d t o 6 0 d e g r e e s.
V. S I M UL AT I O N R E S UL T S
T o i l l u st r a t e t h e c o n t r o l l e r p e r f o r m a n c e o f t h e p r o p o se d
f o r m a t i o n c o n t r o l sc h e m e , a si m u l a t i o n i s c a r r i e d o u t i n
w h i c h t h r e e AUVs a r e r e st r i c t e d t o c o m m u n i c a t e o n t h e w a y
sp e c i f i e d b y t h e f o l l o w i n g g r a p h ,
I . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . F i g 5 . C o m n i a i o . o p l g y o . t r
F i g . 5 . C o m m u n i c a t i o n t o p o l o g y o f t h r e e AUV
w h i c h m e a n s t h a t AUV 1 i s a l l o w e d t o c o m m u n i c a t e
w i t h AUV 2 a n d 3 , b u t t h e l a st t w o d o n o t c o m m u n i c a t e
b e t w e e n t h e m se l v e s d i r e c t l y . I t i s r e q u i r e d t h a t AUVs k e e p a
f o r m a t i o n p a t t e r n t h a t c o n si st s o f h a v i n g t h e m a l i g n e d a l o n g
a c o m m o n v e r t i c a l l i n e . S p e c i f i c a l l y , t h e d e si r e d p a t h s a r e
p a r a m e t e r i z e d a s
x p i
=
2 0 t a n h ( c i ) + i a n d
y p i
=
i , w i t h
& i C { 1 ,2 ,3 } E { l O m , O m , - l O m } i s t h e o f f se t b e t w e e n e a c h
AUVs t r a j e c t o r i e s. F i g u r e 6 i l l u st r a t e s t h e t r a n si e n t b e h a v i o r
1 0 2 0 3 0 4 0 5 0
T i m e [ s]
7 0
F i g . 7 . T i m e e v o l u t i o n o f d i f f e r e n t su r g e sp e e d s
9 ~~~~~~~~~
8
7 -
I f
. 1
5 -
4 l
I 1 -
I
1
- 1
I
1 0 2 0 3 0 4 0 5 0
T i m e [ s]
6 0 7 0 8 0
F i g . 8 . Ac t u a t o r i n p u t si g n a l s F i
9 7 8 - 1 - 4 2 4 4 - 2 1 2 6 - 8 / 0 8 / $ 2 5 . 0 0 2 0 0 8 I E E E
I I
I F
c
P I ,
w
5 0 _
4 0
3 0
2 0
1 0
- 1 0
2 0
- 3 0
- 4 0
- 5 0 _
0 1 0 2 0 3 0 4 0 5 0
T i m e [ s]
6 0 7 0 8 0
F i g . 9 . Ac t u a t o r i n p u t si g n a l s a i
2 0
1 5
1 0
E - 5
- 1 0
- 1 5
- 2 0
- 2 5
0 1 0 2 0 3 0 4 0 5 0
T i m e [ s]
6 0 7 0 8 0
I r 6 . 1 4
Kg m 2
k ,=
0 . 7 9 Kg / s
k u u
=3 . 1 8 Kg / m
k ,
=1 . 2 2 Kg / s
k ,
=1 0 6 9 . 4 Kg / r n
k r =0 . 1 5 Kg m 2 / s
k r r 7 6 . 7 3 Kg m 2
X t =0 . 7 4 m
F m a x =1 4 . 3 1 N
a m a x
=
7 / 3
R E F E R E NC E S
[ 1 ] P . K. C . Wa n g , F . Y. H a d a e g h , K. L a u , S y n c h r o n i z e d f o r m a t i o n r o t a t i o n
a n d a t t i t u d e c o n t r o l o f m u l t i p l e f r e e - f l y i n g sp a c e c r a f t , J o u r n a l o f
Gu i d a n c e , C o n t r o l , a n d Dy n a m i c s 2 2 ( 1 ) ( 1 9 9 9 ) 2 8 - 3 5 .
[ 2 ] A. J a d b a b a i e , J . L i n , A. S . M o r se , C o o r d i n a t i o n o f g r o u p s o f m o b i l e
a u t o n o m o u s a g e n t s u si n g n e a r e st n e i g h b o r r u l e s, I E E E T r a n sa c t i o n s
o n Au t o m a t i c C o n t r o l 4 8 ( 6 ) ( 2 0 0 3 ) 9 8 8 - 1 0 0 1 .
[ 3 ] L . M o r e a u , S t a b i l i t y o f m u l t i - a g e n t sy st e m s w i t h t i m e - d e p e n d e n t
c o m m u n i c a t i o n l i n k s, I E E E T r a n sa c t i o n s o n Au t o m a t i c C o n t r o l 5 0
( 2 ) ( 2 0 0 5 ) 1 6 9 - 1 8 2 .
[ 4 ] J . R . L a w t o n , R . W. B e a r d , B . Yo u n g , A d e c e n t r a l i z e d a p p r o a c h t o
f o r m a t i o n m a n e u v e r s, I E E E T r a n sa c t i o n s o n R o b o t i c s a n d Au t o m a t i o n
1 9 ( 6 ) ( 2 0 0 3 ) 9 3 3 - 9 4 1 .
[ 5 ] G. R o y l e , C . Go d si l , GAl g e b r a i c g r a p h t h e o r y , i n : S p r i n g e r Gr a d u a t e
T e x t s i n M a t h e m a t i c s # 2 0 7 , Ne w Yo r k , 2 0 0 1 .
[ 6 ]
[ 7 ]
F i g . 1 0 . C o o r d i n a t i o n e r r o r s
VI . C O NC L US I O N
T h i s p a p e r h a s a d d r e sse d f u n d a m e n t a l k i n e m a t i c a sp e c t s
o f f o r m a t i o n c o n t r o l . A so c a l l e d g u i d e d f o r m a t i o n c o n t r o l
sc h e m e b a se d o n p a t h f o l l o w i n g a p p r o a c h [ 8 ] w a s d e v e l o p e d .
T h e d e c e n t r a l i z e d so l u t i o n a d o p t e d f o r c o o r d i n a t i n g v e h i c l e s
d o e s n o t r e q u i r e t h e c o n c e p t o f a l e a d e r a n d a p p l i e s t o
a v e r y g e n e r a l c l a ss o f p a t h s. T h e t h e o r e t i c a l t o o l s u se d
f o r f o r m a t i o n p a t h f o l l o w i n g c o n t r o l b r o u g h t t o g e t h e r t h e
L y a p u n o v - b a se d t e c h n i q u e s a n d g r a p h t h e o r y . Nu m e r i c a l
so l u t i o n w a s e m p l o y e d t o i l l u st r a t e t h e t r a n si e n t b e h a v i o r o f
t h e p r o p o se d sc h e m e . F u r t h e r w o r k i s r e q u i r e d t o e x t e n t t h e
m e t h o d o l o g y t o t i m e d e l a y c o m m u n i c a t i o n b e t w e e n v e h i c l e s.
VI I . AC KNO WL E DGE M E NT S
T h e a u t h o r s w a n t t o t h a n k s t o p r o f e sso r s F e r n a n d o Va l e n -
c i a g a a n d P a b l e P u l e st o n , b o t h f r o m t h e Na t i o n a l Un i v e r si t y
o f L a P l a t a ( UNL P ) , Ar g e n t i n a f o r t h e i r c o n t r i b u t i o n s i n
t h e d e r i v a t i o n o f t h e AUV d y n a m i c s a n d p a t h c o n t r o l l e r .
We a l so t h a n k s Al b e r t o Al v a r e z f o r h i s f r u i t f u l c o n t r i b u t i o n s
a n d a d v i c e s. We a c k n o w l e d g e f i n a n c i a l su p p o r t b y t h e M E C
( S p a i n ) a n d F E DE R ( E U) t h r o u g h p r o j e c t s T R A2 0 0 6 - 1 3 3 1 8
a n d P C I 2 0 0 5 - A7 - 0 3 5 6 .
VI I I . AP P E NDI X
A. C o r m o r a n ' s P a r a m e t e r s
m r n =2 5 . 2 5 Kg
m n =5 3 . 4 7 Kg
C . Go d si l , G. R o y a l e , Al g e b r i c Gr a p h T h e o r y , Gr a d u a t e d T e x t s i n
M a t h e m a t i c s, S p r i n g e r - Ve r l a g Ne w Yo r k , I n c . ( 2 0 0 1 ) .
A. P . Ag u i a r , A. M . P a sc o a l . C o o r d i n a t e d p a t h - f o l l o w i n g c o n t r o l
f o r n o n l i n e a r sy st e m s w i t h l o g i c - b a se d c o m m u n i c a t i o n , I n P r o c . o f
C DC ' 0 7 - 4 6 t h I E E E C o n f e r e n c e o n De c i si o n a n d C o n t r o l , Ne w
O r l e a n s, L A, US A, De c . 2 0 0 7 .
[ 8 ] M . B r e i v i k a n d T . F o sse n , " P r i n c i p l e s o f g u i d a n c e - b a se d p a t h
f o l l o w i n g i n 2 d a n d 3 d ," i n 4 4 t h I E E E C o n f e r e n c e o n De c i si o n a n d
C o n t r o l , S e v i l l a , S p a i n , De c 2 0 0 5 , p p . 6 2 7 6 3 4 .
[ 9 ]
," A u n i f i e d c o n c e p t f o r c o n t r o l l i n g a m a r i n e su r f a c e v e sse l
t h r o u g h t h e e n t i r e sp e e d e n v e l o p e ," i n P r o c e e d i n g s o f t h e M E D0 5 ,
L i m a sso l , C y p r u s, 2 0 0 5 .
[ 1 0 ] M . B r e i v i k , M . V. S u b b o t i n , a n d T . I . F o sse n , " Gu i d e d f o r m a t i o n
c o n t r o l f o r f u l l y a c t u a t e d m a r i n e su r f a c e c r a f t ," i n P r o c e e d i n g s o f t h e
7 t h I F AC M C M C , L i sb o n , P o r t u g a l , 2 0 0 6 .
[ 1 1 ] T . F o sse n , M a r i n e C o n t r o l S y st e m s g u i d a n c e , n a v i g a t i o n a n d c o n t r o l
o f sh i p s, r i g s a n d u n d e r w a t e r v e h i c l e s, No r w a y : M a r i n e C i b e r n e t i c s
AS . , 2 0 0 2 .
[ 1 2 ] Kh a l i l . H K. No n l i n e a r S y st e m s. M a c m i l l a n , Ne w Yo r k , 1 9 9 2 .
[ 1 3 ] R . Gh a b c h e l o o , A. P . Ag u i a r , A. P a sc o a l , C . S i l v e st r e , I . Ka m i n e r
a n d J . H e sp a n h a , C o o r d i n a t e d p a t h - f o l l o w i n g c o n t r o l o f m u l t i p l e
u n d e r a c t u a t e d a u t o n o m o u s v e h i c l e s i n t h e p r e se n c e o f c o m m u n i c a t i o n
f a i l u r e s. I n : P r o c . I E E E C o n f . De c i si o n a n d C o n t r o l ( C DC ) . S a n
Di e g o , C A, US A, 2 0 0 6 .
[ 1 4 ] F . Va l e n c i a g a P . F . P u l e st o n 0 . C a l v o G. G. Ac o st a , T r a j e c t o r y
T r a c k i n g o f t h e C o r m o r a n AUV B a se d o n a P I - M I M O Ap p r o a c h . I n :
P r o c . I E E E C o n f . O c e a n ' 0 7 . Ab e r d e e n , S c o t l a n d , UK, 2 0 0 7
[ 1 5 ] Z . P . J i a n g , A. T e e l a n d L . P r a l y . " S m a l l - g a i n t h e o r e m f o r I S S sy st e m s
a n d a p p l i c a t i o n s" . M a t h . C o n t r o l , S i g n a l s a n d S y st e m s 7 , 9 5 1 2 0 . 1 9 9 4
[ 1 6 ] S c o t t e d w a r d H o d e l , A. a n d H a l l , C . E . : ' Va r i a b l e - st r u c t u r e P I D c o n t r o l
t o p r e v e n t i n t e g r a t o r w i n d u p ' , I E E E T r a n s. l n d . E l e c t r o n i c s, 2 0 0 1 . 4 8 ,
( 2 ) , p p .
4 4 2 4 5 1
9 7 8 - 1 - 4 2 4 4 - 2 1 2 6 - 8 / 0 8 / $ 2 5 . 0 0 2 0 0 8 I E E E
-
3 2 - 1 3 3
1 3 - 3
1
Formation path following control of unicycle-type mobile robots
Jawhar Ghommam, Maarouf Saad and Facal Mnif
AbstractThis paper presents a control strategy for coordi-
nation of multiple mobile robots. A combination of the virtual
structure and path following approaches is used to derive the
formation architecture. The formation controller is proposed
for the kinematic model of two-degrees of freedom unicycle-
type mobile robots. The approach is then extended to consider
formation controller for its complete dynamic model. The
controller is designed in such a way that the path derivative is
left as a free input to synchronize the robots motion. Simulation
results with three robots, are included to show the performance
of our control system.
I. INTRODUCTION
During the last years, efforts have been made to give
autonomy to single mobile robots by using different sensors,
actuators and advanced control algorithms. This was mainly
motivated by the necessity to develop complex tasks in an
autonomous way, as demanded by service or production
applications. In some applications, a valid alternative (or
even the mandatory solution) is the use of multiple simple
robots which, operating in a coordinated way, can develop
complex tasks ([8], [1], [2]). This alternative offers additional
advantages, in terms of exibility in operating the group of
robots and failure tolerance due to redundancy in available
mobile robots [3]. In the literature, there have been roughly
three methods to formation control of multiple robots : leader
following, behavioral and virtual structure. Each approach
has its own advantages and disadvantages.
In the leader following approach, some vehicles are consi-
dered as leaders, whilst the rest of robots in the group act
as followers [8], [6]. The leaders track predened reference
trajectories, and the followers track transformed versions
of the states of their nearest neighbors according to given
schemes. An advantage of the leader-following approach is
that it is easy to understand and implement. In addition,
the formation can still be maintained even if the leader is
perturbed by some disturbances. However, the disadvantage
related to this approach is that there is no explicit feedback to
the formation, that is, no explicit feedback from the followers
to the leader in this case.
The behavioral approach prescribes a set of desired beha-
viors for each member in the group, and weighs them such
that desirable group behavior emerges without an explicit
model of the subsystems or the environment. Possible be-
haviors include trajectory and neighbor tracking, collision
J. Ghommam and F.Mnif are with Research unit on Mechatronics and
Autonoumous Systems,

Ecole Nationale dIng enieurs de Sfax (ENIS), BP
W, 3038 Sfax, Tunisia. E-mail:jawhar.ghommam@ieee.org,
mnif@ieee.org
M. Saad is with the Department of Electrical Engineering,

Ecole de
technologie sup erieure, 1100, rue Notre-Dame Ouest Montr eal, Qu ebec
Canada H3C 1K3 E-mail: maarouf.saad@etsmtl.ca
and obstacle avoidance, and formation keeping. In [4] the
behavioral approach for multi-robot teams is described where
formation behaviors are implemented with other navigational
behaviors to derive control strategies for goal seeking, col-
lision avoidance and formation maintenance. The advantage
is that it is natural to derive control strategies when vehicles
have multiple competing objectives, and an explicit feedback
is included through communication between neighbors. The
disadvantages is that the group behavior cannot be explicitly
dened, and it is difcult to analyze the approach mathema-
tically and guarantee the group stability.
In the virtual structure approach, the entire formation is
treated as a single, virtual, structure and acts as a single
rigid body. The control law for a single vehicle is derived
by dening the dynamics of the virtual structure and then
translates the motion of the virtual structure into the desired
motion for each vehicle ([16], [17], [18]). in [5] virtual
structures have been achieved by having all members of the
formation tracking assigned nodes which move into desired
conguration. A formation feedback has been used to prevent
members leaving the group. Each member of the formation
tracks a virtual element, while the motion of the elements are
governed by a formation function that species the desired
geometry of the formation. The main advantages of the
virtual structure approach is that it is fairly easy to prescribe
the coordinated behavior for the group, and the formation
can be maintained very well during the manoeuvres, i.e.
the virtual structure can evolve as a whole in a given
direction with some given orientation and maintain a rigid
geometric relationship among multiple vehicles. However, if
the formation has to maintain the exact same virtual structure
at the times, the potential applications are limited especially
when the formation shape is time-varying or needs to be
frequently recongured.
This paper develops a control law based on virtual struc-
ture approach for coordination of a group of N mobile
robots. The conventional virtual structure is modied so
that the formation shape can change. A formation of a
simplied kinematic model of robots is rstly considered
to clarify the design philosophy. The proposed technique
is then extended to the dynamics of mobile robots with
nonholonomic constraints. The conventional virtual structure
approach is modied so that the formation shape can vary,
i.e. the robots can change their relative positions with respect
to the center of the virtual structure during the manoeuvre.
The technique of maneuvering design [9] is employed to
guarantee convergence of the robots to their locations with a
prescribed dynamic. The feedback controller is designed in
such a way that the derivative of the path parameter is left
2008 IEEE International Conference on
Robotics and Automation
Pasadena, CA, USA, May 19-23, 2008
978-1-4244-1647-9/08/$25.00 2008 IEEE. 1966
as an additional control input to synchronize the formation
motion.
II. PROBLEM STATEMENT
A. Kinematic model
We consider a group of N mobile robots, each of which
has the following equations of motion
x
i
= v
i
cos(
i
)
y
i
= v
i
sin(
i
)
i
=
i
(1)
where,
i
= [x
i
, y
i
,
i
]
denotes the position and the

orientation vector of the i
th
robot of the group with respect
to an inertial coordination frame see Fig 1. v
i
and
i
stand
li
Yi
Xi
surge axis
sway axis
xei
yei
di
i
Fig. 1. Formation Setup.
for the linear and angular velocities respectively. For the
group to move in a prescribed formation, each member will
require an individual parameterized reference path so that
when all paths parameters are synchronized the member
i will be in formation. We can generalize the setup of a
single path (s) to n paths by dening the center of a
virtual structure that moves along a given reference path
(s
0
) = [x
d0
(s
0
), y
d0
(s
0
)] with s
0
being a path parameter
and create a set of n designation vectors l
i
(x
d0
(s
i
), y
d0
(s
i
))
relative to the center of the structure. When the center of the
virtual structure moves along the path
0
(s
0
), mobile robot
i will then follow the individual desired path given by
i
(s
i
) =
0
(s
0
) +R(
d0
(s
i
))l
i
(x
d0
(s
i
), y
d0
(s
i
)) (2)
where R(
d0
(s
i
)) is a rotation matrix from a frame attached
to the center of the virtual structure and the earth xed frame.
which is given as
R(
d0
(s
i
)) =
_
cos(
0
(s
i
)) sin(
0
(s
i
))
sin(
0
(s
i
)) cos(
0
(s
i
))
_
d0
(s
i
) = arctan
_
y
si
d0
x
si
d0
_
(3)
where the partial derivatives notations in [9]-[10] are used,
i.e.,
y
si
d0
=
y
d0
(s
i
)
s
i
, and x
si
d0
=
x
d0
(s
i
)
s
i
B. Control objective
Before going onward the design, we rst give the follo-
wing assumption :
Assumption 1:
1) We assume that each mobile robot i of the formation
broadcasts its state and reference trajectory to the rest
of the robot in the group. Moreover it can receive states
and reference trajectory from the other robot of the
group.
2) The desired geometric path is regularly parameterized
i.e. there exist strictly positive constants
1i
and
2i
,
1 i N such that
(x
si
di
)
2
(s) + (y
si
di
)
2
(s)
1i
, s
0

2i
(4)
Remark 1: The last inequality of equation (4), means
that the center of the virtual structure moves forward.
The overall control objective is to solve the Formation
Problem for N mobile robots which consists of two parts
[9] : The geometric task which ensures that the individual
mobile robot converges to and stay at its designation in
the formation. The dynamic task ensures that the formation
maintains a speed along the path according to the given speed
assignment. The formation control objective boils down to
design controller v
i
and
i
such that
lim
t
i
(t)
di
(t) = 0
lim
t
|s
i
(t) s
0
(t)| = 0 (5)
where
id
denotes the i
th
reference path to be tracked by
robot i.
III. PATH FOLLOWING ERROR DYNAMIC
The problem we consider here is the path following for
each mobile robot in the formation ; that is we wish to nd
control law v
i
and
i
such that the robot follows a reference
point in the path with position
di
= [x
di
, y
di
,
di
]
and
inputs v
di
and
di
. The path error is therefore interpreted in
a frame attached to the reference path (s
i
). Following [11]
we dene the error coordinates
_
_
x
ei
y
ei
ei
_
_
=
_
_
cos(
i
) sin(
i
) 0
sin(
i
) cos(
i
) 0
0 0 1
_
_
_
_
x
i
x
di
y
i
y
di
di
_
_
(6)
where
di
is dened as
di
= arctan
_
y
si
di
x
si
di
_
(7)
The error dynamics are then
x
ei
= v
i
v
di
cos(
ei
) + y
ei
i
y
ei
= v
di
sin(
ei
) x
ei
i
(8)
ei
=
i
di
1967
where we have dened
v
di
=
_
x
si
di
(s
i
)
2
+ y
si
di
(s
i
)
2
s
i
:= v
di
(s
i
) s
i
(9)
di
=
x
si
di
(s
i
)y
s
2
i
di
(s
i
) x
s
2
i
di
(s
i
)y
si
di
(s
i
)
x
si
di
(s
i
)
2
+ y
si
di
(s
i
)
2
s
i
:=
di
(s
i
) s
i
(10)
IV. CONTROL DESIGN
In the tracking model (8), y
ei
could not be directly
controlled, and to overcome this difculty, we employ the
backstepping approach. [13].
Dene the following variable
s
i
= s
i
+
i
(t, x
e
, y
e
,
e
) (11)
where x
e
= [x
e1
, x
e2
, . . . , x
en
]
, y
e
= [y
e1
, y
e2
, . . . , y
en
]
and
e
= [
e1
,
e2
, . . . ,
en
]
,
i
(t, x
e
, y
e
,
e
) is a strictly
positive function that species how fast the i
th
mobile robot
should move to maintain the formation since s
i
is related to
the desired forward speed v
di
.
Step 1: Design a controller to stabilize the x
ei
dynamic.
The variable

s
i
should be left as an extra controller in order
to synchronize all the path parameters of each mobile robot
in the formation. We therefore choose the following control
for x
ei
v
i
= k
1i
x
ei
+ v
di
cos(
ei
) (12)
in closed loop the x
ei
dynamic rewrites
x
ei
= k
1i
x
ei
v
di

s
i
cos(
ei
) + y
ei
i
(13)
From (13), it is seen that if

s
i
and y
ei
are zero, then x
ei
globally exponentially converges to zero. The next step of
the design will focus on designing a controller to stabilize
ei
at the origin.
Step 2: Design a controller for
i
. Consider the follo-
wing Lyapunov function
V =
1
2
n
i=1
(x
2
ei
+ y
2
ei
+
2
ei
+
i
(s
i
s
0
)
2
) (14)
where
i
is a positive constant. The time derivative of (14)
along the solutions of (13) and (8) yields
V =
n
i=1
x
ei
(k
1i
x
ei
v
di

s
i
cos(
ei
) + y
ei
i
)
+
n
i=1
y
ei
( v
di
(
s
i
+
i
) sin(
ei
) x
ei
i
) +
n
i=1
ei
(
i

di
(
s +
i
)) +
n
i=1
i
(s
i
s
0
)(
s
i
+
i
s
0
)
(15)
If we select
i
= s
0
(16)
the derivative of the Lyapunov function V becomes
V =
n
i=1
k
1i
x
2
ei
+
ei
_
y
ei
v
di
i
_
1
0
cos(
ei
)d
+
i

di
i
_
+
n
i=1
_
v
di
cos(
ei
)x
ei
+y
ei
v
di
sin(
ei
)
ei

di
+
i
(s
i
s
0
)
_
s
i
(17)
To make the derivative of the Lyapunov function V negative,
we choose the following controllers
i
= k
2i
ei
y
ei
v
di
i
_
1
0
cos(
ei
)d +
di
s
i
=
tanh
_
v
di
cos(
ei
)x
ei
+ y
ei
v
di
sin(
ei
)
ei

di
+
i
(s
i
s
0
)
_
(18)
where
is a positive constant to be selected later. Substi-

tuting the equations of (18) into (17) yields
V =
n
i=1
k
1i
x
2
ei
k
2i
2
ei
i
tanh(
i
) (19)
where
i
= v
di
cos(
ei
)x
ei
+ y
ei
v
di
sin(
ei
)
ei

di
+
i
(s
i
s
0
). We are able now to choose an appropriate
function for s
0
such that when the tracking errors are large,
the center of the virtual structure will wait for the rest of
the group however when the errors converge to zero, we
impose s
0
to approach a given positive bounded function
0
(t) which means that the center of the virtual structure
will move at a desired speed. s
0
can be chosen as among
many others [14]
s
0
=
0
(t)(1
1
e
2(tt0)
)(1
3
tanh(x
e

x
x
e
+y
e

y
y
e
+
e
)) (20)
where
0
(t) is a strictly positive and bounded function. This
function species how fast the whole group of robots should
move.
x
,
y
and
are weighting positive matrices. All

the constants
1
,
2
and
3
are nonnegative and
1
and
3
should be less than 1. Now if we choose the constant
such that
<
0
(t)(1
1
)(1
3
) (21)
then we have
s
i
=
tanh(
i
) +
0
(t)(1
1
e
2(tt0)
)
(1
3
tanh(x
e

x
x
e
+ y
e

y
y
e
+
e
))

+
0
(t)(1
1
)(1
3
) > 0 (22)
1968
From the above control design, we have the closed loop
system
x
ei
= k
1i
x
ei
v
di

s
i
cos(
ei
) + y
ei
i
y
ei
= v
di
sin(
ei
) + k
2i
ei
x
ei
+ y
ei
x
ei
v
di
i
_
1
0
cos(
ei
)d x
ei

di
i
(23)
ei
= k
2i
ei
y
ei
v
di
i
_
1
0
cos(
ei
)d
di

s
i
s
i
=
tanh(
i
) +
0
(t)(1
1
e
2(tt0)
)
(1
3
tanh(x
e

x
x
e
+ y
e

y
y
e
+
e
))
We now state the main result of the formation control for
kinematic model of unicycle-type mobile robots.
Theorem 1: Under Assumption 1, the control inputs v
i
and
i
given in (12) and (18) and the time derivative of each
individual path s
i
given in (22) for the mobile robot i solve
the formation control objective. In particular the closed loop
system is forward complete and the position and orientation
of the robots track their path reference asymptotically in the
sense of (5)
Proof: (Forward completness) From (19), we have that
V 0, which implies that

V (t) V (t
0
), t t
0
(24)
From the denition of V , the right hand side of (24) is boun-
ded by a positive constant depending on the initial conditions.
The boundedness of the left hand side of (24) also implies
those of x
ei
, y
ei
,
ei
and s
i
s
0
for all t t
0
0. The
assumed boundedness of
0
(t) implies that of the right hand
side of the last equation of (23), depends continuously on t
through bounded functions. It follows that s
i
and therefore
s
0
are bounded on the maximal interval of denition [0, T),
this excludes nite escape time so T = +. This in turn
implies by construction that x
i
(t), y
i
(t),
i
(t), s
i
and s
0
do
not go to innity in nite time.
(Stability of (x
ei
, y
ei
,
ei
)) From the above argument on the
boundedness of (x
ei
, y
ei
,
ei
, s
i
s
0
), applying Barbalts
lemma [19] to (19) results in
lim
t
(x
ei
,
ei
) = 0
lim
t
i
tanh(
i
) = 0
(25)
On the other hand, from the second equation of (25), we
conclude that
lim
t
i
= 0
lim
t

s
i
= 0
(26)
From this fact, we also conclude that
lim
t
(s
i
s
0
) = 0 (27)
which satises the second objective of (5). To satisfy the rst
objective of (5), we have to show that y
ei
also converges to
zero as t goes to innity. In closed loop the
ei
dynamic
rewrites as follows
ei
= k
2i
ei
y
ei
v
di
i
_
1
0
cos(
ei
)d
di

s
i
(28)
Let f(t) = y
ei
v
di
i
_
1
0
cos(
ei
)d
di

s
i
, a direct
application of lemma 2 in [13](see appendix), it follows that
lim
t
y
ei
v
di
i
_
1
0
cos(
ei
)d = 0
since lim
t
_
1
0
cos(
ei
)d = 1 then lim
t
y
ei
= 0
which concludes about the rst objective of (5).
V. EXTENSION OF FORMATION CONTROL TO DYNAMIC
MODEL OF THE MOBILE ROBOT
In this section, we study the augmented system (8) appen-
ded with a dynamic [12].
x
ei
= v
i
v
di
cos(
ei
) + y
ei
i
y
ei
= v
di
sin(
ei
) x
ei
i
(29)
ei
=
i
di
M
i

i
= C
i
(
i
)
i
D
i
i
+ B
i
i
where
i
= [v
i
,
i
]
,
i
= [
1i
,
2i
]
being the control vector

torque applied to the wheels of the robot i. The modied
mass matrix, Coriolis and Damping matrices are given by
M
i
= B
1
i
M
i
B
i
, C
i
(
i
) = B
1
i
C
i
(
i
)B
i
D
i
= B
1
i
D
i
B
i
where B
i
is an invertible matrix given by B
i
=
_
1 b
i
1 b
i
_
and M =
_
m
11i
m
12i
m
12i
m
11i
_
, C
i
(
i
) =
_
0 c
i
i
c
i
i
0
_
, D
i
=
_
d
11i
0
0 d
22i
_
with
b
i
, m
11i
, m
22i
, d
11i
, d
22i
and c
i
are the dynamic parameters
of each group which are not necessarily know. Denitions
of these parameters are given in [12]. In this section we are
intended to show that the formation control developed for
the kinematic model can also be obtained for the complete
dynamic of the unicycle-type mobile robots. The control
objective is thereby similar to that of (5) and consists of
nding the controller
i
that satises all conditions of (5).
Introduce the following new variables
ei
=
i
i
, v
ei
= v
i
vi
,
ei
=
i
i
(30)
where
vi
and
i
are dened as in (12) and (18) respecti-
vely. Following the notation in section IV, in the new coor-
dinates (x
ei
, y
ei
,
ei
, v
ei
,
ei
) the system (29) is transformed
1969
into
x
ei
= k
1i
x
ei
v
di

s
i
cos(
ei
) + y
ei
i
+ v
ei
y
ei
= v
di
sin(
ei
) + k
2i
ei
x
ei
+ y
ei
x
ei
v
di
i
_
1
0
cos(
ei
)d x
ei

di
i
x
ei
ei
ei
= k
2i
ei
y
ei
v
di
i
_
1
0
cos(
ei
)d
di

s
i
+
ei
(31)
M
ei
= C
i
(
i
)
i
D
i
i
M
i
[
vi
,
i
]
+ B
i
i
= D
i
ei
+
i
i
+ B
i
i
where
i
=
_

2
i

vi

vi
0 0 0
0 0 0
i
v
i

i

i
_
i
=
_
b
i
c
i
d
11i
m
11i
+ m
12i
c
i
b
i
d
22i
m
11i
m
12i
_
(32)
At this stage, we design the actual control input vector
i
and
updated laws for unknown system parameter vector
i
for
each robot i. To do so, we consider the following Lyapunov
function
V
2
= V +
1
2
N
i
_
ei
M
i
ei
+

i

1
i
i
_
(33)
where

i
=
i
i
, with

i
being an estimate of
i
and
i
is a symmetric positive denite matrix. Differentiating
both sides of (33) along the solutions of (31) and (17) and
choosing the control input
i
, the path parameter s
i
and the
updated law

i
as
i
= B
1
_
K
1i
ei
_
x
ei

ei
i
=
i
proj(
i

ei
,

i
)
s
i
=
tanh(
i
) +
0
(t)(1
1
e
2(tt0)
)
(1
3
tanh(x
e

x
x
e
+ y
e

y
y
e
+
e
))
(34)
Where the operator, proj, is the Lipschitz continuous
projection [7] algorithm applied in our case as follows :
proj(, ) = , if, ( ) 0
proj(, ) = , if, ( ) 0 and

( ) 0
proj(, ) = (1 ( )), if, ( ) > 0 and

( ) > 0
where ( ) = (
2
2
M
)/(k
2
+2k
M
),

( ) = (

( )

),
k is an arbitrarily small positive constant, is an estimate
of and ||
M
= proj(, ) and (t
0
)
M
then
a) (t)
M
+ k, 0 t
0
t
b) proj(, ) is Lipschitz continuous
c) |proj(, )| ||
d) proj(, ) with =
and K
1i
is a symmetric positive denite matrix. Using
Property d) of the projection algorithm results in
V
2

n
i=1
_
k
1i
x
2
ei
+ k
2i
2
ei
+
i
tanh(
i
)
+
ei
(D
i
+ K
1i
)
ei
_
(35)
From the above control design, we have the closed loop
system
x
ei
= k
1i
x
ei
v
di

s
i
cos(
ei
) + y
ei
i
+ v
ei
y
ei
= v
di
sin(
ei
) + k
2i
ei
x
ei
+ y
ei
x
ei
v
di
i
_
1
0
cos(
ei
)d x
ei

di
i
x
ei
ei
ei
= k
2i
ei
y
ei
v
di
i
_
1
0
cos(
ei
)d
di

s
i
+
ei
M
ei
= (D
i
+ K
1i
)
ei
+
i
_
x
ei

ei
s
i
=
tanh(
i
) +
0
(t)(1
1
e
2(tt0)
)
(1
3
tanh(x
e

x
x
e
+ y
e

y
y
e
+
e
))
i
=
i
proj(
i

ei
,

i
) (36)
Theorem 2: Under Assumption 1, the control inputs
i
and the update law

i
given in (34) for the mobile
robot i solve the formation control objective. In particular
the closed loop system (36) is forward complete and all
signals in the closed loop system are Uniformly Ultimately
Bounded (UUB).
Proof: Let X
ei
= [x
ei
, y
ei
,
ei
]
and Z
i
=
[X
ei
,
ei
,

i
, s
i
]
. Considering (35), by subtracting and

adding
1
2
N
i=1
i

1
i
i
to its right hand side, we arrive
at
V
2
V
2
+ (37)
where = min
_
1, 2
1
, . . . ,
N
_
,
i
= min
_
k
1i
, k
2i
,
_
and =
1
2
N
i=1
i

1
i
i
. From (37), it is straightforward
to show that
V
2
(t) V
2
(t
0
)e
(tt0)
+

(38)
This implies that for all t in the maximal interval of denition
[0, T)
Z
i
p
i
Z
i
(t
0
)e
0.5(tt0)
+
i
(39)
where p
i
is a constant that depends on the elements of
i
,
and
i
=
_
. Consequently, all the signals in the closed-

loop are guaranteed to be UUB.
The assumed boundedness of
0
(t) implies that the right
hand side of (36) depends continuously on time t through
bounded function. With Z
i
being bounded it follows that
(36) is bounded on the maximal interval of denition. This
excludes nite escape times.
1970
VI. SIMULATIONS
We carry out a simulation example for the formation of the
kinematic model of the robots to illustrate the results, simula-
tion example for the dynamic model is however omitted due
to space limitation. The number of robots in the formation
group is chosen for simplicity N = 3. The initial positions
of robots, the initial conditions and the design constants are
chosen as follows
[x
1
, y
1
,
1
]
= [0, 0, 0]
, [x
2
, y
2
,
2
]
= [2, 1, 0]
,
[x
3
, y
3
,
3
]
= [2, 3, 0]
,
1
(0) =
2
(0) = [0, 0]
k
1
= 150, k
2
= 70
s
i
(0) = 2,
= 0.12,
0
= 5 (40)
1
= 0.5,
2
= 2,
3
= 0.5
x
=
y
=
= diag(1, 1, 1)
We run two simulations with two different reference paths
for the center of the virtual structure, the rst reference path
0
is chosen as x
d
(s) = s, y
d
(s) = 0. The distance from
the mobile robots to the center of the virtual structure are
therefore as follows
l
1
(x
d0
(s
1
), y
d0
(s
1
)) = (0, 4),
l
2
(x
d0
(s
2
), y
d0
(s
2
)) = (3, 8 + 3 tanh(0.5s
1
))
l
3
(x
d0
(s
3
), y
d0
(s
3
)) = (3, 8 + 3 tanh(0.5s
1
))
These choices mean that the rst robot coincides with the
center of the virtual structure which moves on a straight
line. The robots position and orientation are plotted in Fig.
2. The path tracking errors and linear velocities are plotted
in Fig. (3-4-5) respectively. It is clear from these gures
that each robot in formation asymptotically tracks its own
path generated by the center of the virtual structure and
the formation is achieved. For the second simulation, the
20 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140
4
2
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
x[m]
y
[
m
]
Fig. 2. Robot position in (x, y) plan.
reference path generated for each robot in the formation are
sinusoidal, the reference path chosen for the center of the
virtual structure is (s
0
) = (s
0
, 0), this means that the center
of the virtual structure is moving along a straight line. The
distance from the robots to the center of the virtual structure
0 10 20 30 40 50
0
0.5
1
1.5
2
2.5
3
3.5
P
a
t
h

p
a
r
a
m
e
t
e
r

e
r
r
o
r

[
m
]
Time [s]
Fig. 3. Path parameter error in the form
_
3
i=1
(s
i
s
0
)
2
.
0 1 2 3 4 5 6
10
8
6
4
2
0
Time[s]
x
e
i
i

{
1
,
2
,
3
}

[
m
]
0 2 4 6
8
6
4
2
0
Time[s]
y
e
i
i
{
1
,
2
,
3
}

[
m
]
0 2 4 6
0.4
0.2
0
0.2
0.4
0.6
Time[s]
e
i
i
{
1
,
2
,
3
}

[
r
a
d
]
Fig. 4. Tracking errors x
ei
, y
ei
and
ei
.
0 1 2 3 4 5
0
50
100
150
Time [s]
v
i
i
{
1
,
2
,
3
}

[
m
s
1
]
Fig. 5. Time evolution of the forward velocity of each robot.
are as follows
l
1
(x
d0
(s
1
), y
d0
(s
1
)) = (0, 0),
l
2
(x
d0
(s
1
), y
d0
(s
1
)) = (3, 8 + 3 cos(0.5s
1
))
l
3
(x
d0
(s
2
), y
d0
(s
2
)) = (3, 8 + 3 sin(0.5s
1
))
The robots position and orientation is plotted in Fig 6.
1971
20 0 20 40 60 80 100 120
15
10
5
0
5
10
15
x [m]
y

[
m
]
Fig. 6. Robot position in (x, y) plan.
VII. CONCLUSION
This paper has proposed a methodology for formation
control of a group of unicycle-type mobile robots represented
at a kinematic level and a dynamic level. The approach
that has been developed is mainly based on a combination
of the virtual structure and path following approaches. The
controller is designed in such a way that the derivative of
the path parameter is left as an additional control input
to synchronize the formation motion. Future work is to
design an observer for both kinematic and dynamic model to
estimate unavailable signals such as velocities or orientation
error tracking.
APPENDIX
Lemma [13]: Consider a scalar system
x = kx + f(t)
where k > 0 and f(t) is a bounded and uniformly continuous
function. If, for any initial t
0
0 and any initial condition
x(t
0
), the solution x(t) is bounded and converges to 0 as
t then
lim
t
f(t) = 0
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1972
Formation Control of Multiple Marine Vehicles Based Passivity-Control
Design
Jawhar Ghommam, Facal Mnif and Oscar Calvo
AbstractThis paper addresses the problem of coordination
path following control of multiple autonomous vehicles. Stated
briey, the problem consists in steering a group of vehicles along
a specied paths, while holding a desired inter-ship formation
pattern. Path-following for each vehicle amounts to reducing an
appropriately dened geometric error to zero. We rst show
a passivity property for the path following system and, next,
combine this with a passivity-based synchronization algorithm
developed in [2] to coordinate the vehicles along their paths.
Vehicle coordination is achieved by adjusting the speed of each
vehicle along its path according to information exchanged on
the positions of a subset of the other vehicles, as determined
by the communication topology adopted. Global stability and
convergence of the closed-loop system are guaranteed.
KeywordsCooperative control, Path following, Serret-
Frenet, Passivity theory, Marine vehicle.
I. INTRODUCTION
In the last few years, coordination control of dynamic
agents has received a major attention within the control
community, partly due to a broad application of multi-agent
systems including ocking/swarming [3], formation control
[4], and sensor networks [5]. Today, relevant applications
utilizing formation control can be found everywhere; in sea,
on land, in the air, and in space.
While each of these areas poses its own challenges, several
common threads can be found. In most cases, the agents
(henceforth called vehicles) are dynamically decoupled, in
the sense that the motion of one does not directly affect
the others. Instead, the vehicles are coupled through the
task they are trying to accomplish jointly. The tasks must
be accomplished in the face of nontrivial vehicle dynamics.
Decisions must be made by each vehicle using only limited
information about the other vehicles information which may
be subject to uncertainty and transmission delay. The reaction
of a vehicle to other vehicles motions renders the formation
an interconnected dynamical system which behavior depends
not only on the individual vehicle dynamics, but also on the
nature of their interconnection. Environmental factors can
impact the overall formation goal, the actions of individual
vehicles within the formation, and the ability of vehicles to
communicate.
This paper addresses the problem of coordinated path-
following where multiple vehicles are required to follow
J.Ghommam and F. Mnif are with Ecole Nationale dIng enieurs de Sfax,
Mechatronics and Autonomous Systems, ,BP W, 3038 Sfax, TUNISIA.
(jawhar.ghommam, mnif)@ieee.org
O.Calvo is with University of the Ballearic Islands Palma de Mallorca,
Spain oscar.calvo@uib.es
pre-specied paths while keeping a desired inter-vehicle
formation pattern. This problem arises, in gathering efcient
data from the environment. The vehicle formation serves as a
recongurable sensor array. Adaptation in this context might
mean that the resolution of this sensor array increases. A
number of other realistic vehicle operation scenarios can
also be envisioned that require cooperative motion control
of marine or other types of vehicles.
Previous work
The problem of coordinated path following control has
recently come to the forum. See for example [6], [7], [9],
[10] and the reference therein for an introduction to the
subject and an overview of important theoretical issues that
warrant consideration. In [12] a coordinated motion control
approach for underactuated underwater vehicles is proposed.
Independent LOS-based cross-track controllers that make the
vehicles follow a given straight line path in 3D, and inde-
pendent coordination controllers that ensures convergence
to the desired formation pattern, are proposed. In these
papers, the proposed schemes adopted for coordination path
following, share a common strategy in that the problem
of coordinated path following is partially decoupled into
two: i) path-following, where the objective is to nd local
closed loop control laws to steer each vehicle to its path
at a reference speed, and ii) multiple vehicle coordination,
where the goal is to adjust the reference speeds of the
vehicles about the desired formation speed, so as to reach
formation. However, the coordination problem based on
this method lacks a complete solution addressing explicitly
practical constraints that arise from the characteristics of
the supporting inter-vehicle communication network such
as communication failures, multi-path effects and distance-
dependent delays. Some of these issues, however, have been
partially addressed in the literature by exploiting the use
of graph theory to model the topology of the underlying
communication network and Lyapunov-based tools to deal
with communication delays or switching topologies [8], [13].
Main contribution
The main issue in this paper is the formation control aspect
in cooperative behavior of marine vehicles. More speci-
cally: how a powerful tool from passivity theory [2] can be
used for formation control issues. We solve the coordinated
path following problem for a class of fully-actuated marine
vehicles moving in two-dimensional space. The solution
adopted is based on passivity theory and addresses explicitly
2009 6th International Multi-Conference on Systems, Signals and Devices
978-1-4244-4346-8/09/$25.00 2009 IEEE
the vehicle dynamics as well as the constraints imposed by
the topology of the inter-vehicle communications network.
Each vehicle is equipped with a controller that makes the
vehicle follow a predened path. The speed of each vehicle
is then adjusted so that the whole group of vehicles will keep
a desired formation pattern. In this framework, we represent
the closed-loop system as the feedback interconnection of a
dynamic block for path variable coordination and another
block that incorporates the path-following systems. The
design of each block is made passive, then the stability of
the overall system is proven by using the Passivity Theorem
which states that an interconnection of two passive blocks is
passive and, thus, stable in the absence of exogenous inputs.
II. PRELIMINARIES
Consider a system
x = f(x, u) y = h(x, u) (1)
where x R
n
denotes the state vector, y R
m
is the system
output, and u R
n
is the control input, is said to be passive
if there exists a C
1
storage function S(x) 0 such that
S(x) W(x) +u
y (2)
for some positive semi-denite function W(x). We say that
(1) is strictly passive if W(x) is positive denite. A static
nonlinearity y = h(u) is passive if, for all u R
n
u
y = u
h(u) 0 (3)
and strictly passive if (6) holds with strict inequality for all
u = 0.
III. PROBLEM STATEMENT
Consider a fully actuated marine vehicle. Let {I} be an
inertial coordinate frame and {B} a body-xed coordinate
frame whose origin is located at the center of mass of the ve-
hicle. The conguration (R, p) of the vehicle is an element of
the Special Euclidean group SE(3) := SO(3) R
3
, where
R SO(3) :=
_
R R
3
3 : RR
= I
3
, det(R) = 1
_
is a
rotation matrix that describes the orientation of the vehicle
and maps body coordinates into inertial coordinates, and
p R
3
is the position of the origin of {B} in {I}. Denoting
by R
3
and R
3
the linear and angular velocities of
the vehicle relative to {I} expressed in {B}, respectively,
the following kinematic relations apply:
p = R
R = RS() (4)
where S is a skew symmetric matrix. We consider the au-
tonomous marine vehicles with dynamic equations of motion
of the following form:
.
u =
m
v
m
u
vr
d
u
m
u
u +
1
m
u
u
.
v =
m
u
m
v
ur
d
v
m
v
v +
1
m
v
v
(5)
.
r =
m
u
m
v
m
r
uv
d
r
m
r
r +
1
m
r
r
where u, v and r denote surge, sway and yaw velocities.
The positive constant terms m
ii
, 1 i 3 denote the ship
inertia including added mass. The positive constant terms d
ii
,
1 i 3 represent the hydrodynamic damping in surge,
sway and yaw. Finally, the control inputs are the surge force
u
and the sway force
v
and yaw moment
r
.
For our purpose, we consider a team of n 2 marine
vehicles and a set of n paths
k
; k = 1, 2, . . . , n and require
that marine vehicle k follow path
k
parameterized by its
path variable s
k
with a desired speed assignment dened in
terms of parameters s
k
. We further require that the vehicles
move along the paths in such a way as to maintain a desired
formation pattern along the paths. Having this in mind, the
coordinated path following can be summarized in two folds
i) the path following and ii) coordination.
A. Path Following
To solve the problem of driving a vehicle along a desired
path, the key idea exploited is to make the vehicle approach a
virtual target that moves along the path with a desired timing
law. An elegant solution was rst advanced at a kinematic
level in [16] for a wheeled mobile robot, from which the
following explanation is obtained: a path following controller
should look at i) the distance from the vehicle to the path
and ii) the angle between the vehicles velocity vector and the
tangent to the path, and reduce both to zero. This suggests
that the kinematic model of the vehicle be derived with
respect to Serret-Frenet frame. However, there is a catch to
this approach. If at any time the vehicle is located at the
origin of the osculating circle, the projected point on the path
will move innitely fast. Hence, the Serret-Frenet kinematics
contain a singularity at such a point. Samson solves this
by restricting the position of the vehicle to be contained
inside a tube surrounding the path, with radius less than a
minimum radius derived from the maximum path curvature.
Such a restriction is obstructing, especially from a theoretical
point-of-view, and effectively excludes the derivation of any
global path following results. The key idea to bypassing the
singularity problem is to add another degree of freedom to
the rate of progression of the virtual target to be tracked
along the path. Formally, this is done by making the center of
the Serret-Frenet evolve according to an extra virtual control
law. The path-following problem can then be formulated as
follows:
Problem 1: (Path following) Given a path (s), develop
feedback control laws for the surge, yaw and sway forces
torque acting on the marine vehicle so that its center of mass
converges asymptotically to the path while its total velocity
track remains at a given desired value.
B. Coordination
Assuming that a path following controller has been imple-
mented for each marine vehicle so as to maintain their motion
along a given path. What is remaining is to coordinate the
movement of the team as long as they propagate along the
paths at the same speed. They then constitute the center of the
rigid-body formation structure. Clearly, a coordination algo-
rithm is required in order to achieve such convergence. The
synchronization essentially occurs on the one-dimensional
manifold that is the path, and requires coordinating the
motion of the virtual target associated with each vehicle
of the team. This naturally translates into synchronizing
the involved path parametrization variables s
k
, k = 1, . . . n.
Hence coordination is achieved when
s
k
= s
l
, s
k
= s
l
, k = l (6)
The objective of coordination boils down to coordinate vari-
ables s
k
, we will refer to them as coordination states. It will
be required also that the formation as a whole propagate with
a desired velocity while coordinated, that is, asymptotically
s
k
= v
c
. With this speed assignment one does not have
to specify the actual speed of the vehicles, but rather those
of their coordination states which are equal and converge
asymptotically to v
c
no matter what type of coordination is
under study.
Problem 2: (Coordination) For vehicle k K :=
{1, . . . , n} derive a control law for the speed command
function of s
k
and s
l
such that each members parameter
achieves in the limit a common velocity v
c
R prescribed for
the group; that is lim
t
| s
k
v
c
| = 0 and s
k
s
l
, i, j K
approach zero as t .
IV. PROBLEM SOLUTIONS
A. Path following controller
In our previous work [11], we proposed a solution to the
problem of path following control for underactuated ship that
overcomes the singularity problem related to the stringent
condition presented in [16]. The path-following controller
was designed using the backstepping technique with adaptive
control to counteract a constant, known direction ocean-
current disturbance, and yields global boundedness and con-
vergence of the position error to a ball centered at the origin.
In this section we apply the results presented in [11] to
solve the path following problem. Consider Fig. 1, where Q
is an arbitrary point on the path to be followed and P is the
center of mass of the vehicle that can be expressed either in
the inertial frame {I} as [x, y]
or in the Serret-Frenet frame

{F} attached to the point Q as [x
e
, y
e
]
. The parameter s is
a signed distance along the path between Q and an arbitrary
xed point on the path. The curvature of the path at the
point Q is denoted by (s).
d
Qx
e
and

OX
B
, denotes the angle between

OX
B
and the
vector velocity in the surge direction and
e
=
d
. Let
U denotes the total velocity of the marine vehicle expressed
as.
_
U
0
_
= R
F
B
_
u
v
_
(7)
where R
F
B
is a rotation matrix from frame {B} to frame {F}.
The norm of the vehicles total velocity is |U| =
u
2
+v
2
.
It is easy to show [11] that the kinematics of the vehicle in
YB
XB
v
u
U
x
y
P
Q
O
{I}
{F}
{B}
ye
xe
Fig. 1. Marine vehicle and frame denitions [11].
the (x
e
, y
e
) coordinates is given as
x
e
= U cos(
e
) s(1 (s)y
e
)
y
e
= U sin(
e
) s(s)x
e
(8)
e
= r + (s) s
where
e
=
e
+ is the error angle and is the angle
between the surge velocity and the total velocity of the
vehicle. The overall dynamic combining the error and motion
dynamic of the marine vehicle is given as
x
e
= U cos(
e
) s(1 (s)y
e
)
y
e
= U sin(
e
) s(s)x
e
e
= r + (s) s
U = f
U
(U, , r) +
U
(
u
,
v
, U, ) (9)
= f
(U, , r) +
(
u
,
v
, U, )
r = f
r
(U, , r) +
1
m
r
r
where f
U
,
U
, f
and f
r
are given in the Appendix. The
problem of path following for the fully actuated marine
vehicle can be summarized as follows: Given a path (s)
and a desired proles for the total velocity and the side
slip angle U
d
and
d
respectively, nd a feedback control
law
U
,
and s to drive x
e
, y
e
,
e
,
d
and U U
d
asymptotically to zero. To drive the the speed U and the side
slip angle to their desired values, require not a complicated
controller, a simple feedback linearization controllers
U
=
k
1
(U U
d
) +

U
d
f
U
(U, , r) and
= k
2
(
d
) +

d
f
(U, , r) would make the errors U U

d
and
d
converge to zero exponentially as t . Controlling U
and is therefore decoupled from the control of the other
variables, and all that remains is to nd controller for
r
and s to drive x
e
, y
e
,
e
to zero. The rst three equations
together with the last one of (8), are in a triangular form
which suggests the use of the backstepping technique found
in [15] to derive the appropriate controller that guaranties
convergence of the required error variables to zero. For
convenience, we divide the control design procedure into
two separate stages. Firstly we consider the rst equation
of (9) and choose s as an auxiliary controller to drive the
x
e
-dynamic to zero exponentially. Secondly the remaining
equations are treated independently from the x
e
-dynamic and
consists to view
e
as a virtual controller to stabilize y
e
then the state variable r as virtual control to stabilize
e
and nally the control input
r
is determined by direct use
of the backstepping technique. The main result of the path
following controller is given in the following theorem which
proof is omitted due to space limitation.
Theorem 1: Assume that the path to be followed by the
vehicle is smooth. Let
e
, and be dened as follows
e
= sign(U) arcsin
_
k
3
y
e
|y
e
| +d
1
_
= k
4
(
e
e
) +(s) s +

e
Uy
e
=
_
1, if
e
psie
= 0
sin esin
e
e
e
, otherwise
where k
1
> 0 and k
2
> 0. Let the control input for
r
and
s be given by
r
= m
r
(k
5
(r ) + (
e
e
) f
r
(U, , r))
s = k
6
x
e
+U cos
e
(10)
where k
4
, k
5
> 0 and k
6
> 0. If the total velocity U satises
the following condition
_
t+T
t
min
_
k, |U()|
_
d T (11)
where T > 0, > 0 and k =
0+d1
k3
min(k
6
, k
5
, k
4
), then the
problem 1 is solved. All signals of the closed loop system are
bounded. Particularly the transformed path following errors
(x
e
, y
e
,
e
) = (0, 0, 0) is a semi-globally asymptotically
stable equilibrium point.
B. Coordination controller
So far, the path-following design established the following
time evolution of the virtual target to be followed by the ith
vehicle:
s
i
= k
6i
x
ei
+U
i
cos
ei
(12)
As explained before, the vehicles become or asymptotically
synchronize if s
ij
= s
i
s
j
, i, j K, this evidently
shows that s
ij
is a good measure of the along path distances
among the vehicles. In the case of a scaled circumferences,
following [7] an appropriate measure of the distances among
the vehicles is
kl
=
si
Ri
sj
Rj
, without loosing generality the
dynamic of the new path parametrization is :
i
=
U
i
R
i
(s
i
)
+
i
(13)
where
i
=
1
Ri(si)
[U
i
(cos
ei
1) +k
6i
x
ei
]. Notice that the
term
i
vanishes to zero asymptotically as the ith vehicle
approaches its path (i.e t ). For the simplicity of the
analysis that follows, we will assume that
i
= 0. Now select
a virtual vehicle henceforth called leader L that moves along
a straight line, for this vehicle, R
L
(s
L
) = 1. Let v
c
be the
desired constant speed assigned to the leader in advance,
that is

L
= v
c
. The vehicles in formation should attain the
speed velocity v
c
once they are in formation. This suggests
the introduction of the following speed tracking error:
i
= U
i
R
i
(s
i
)v
c
(14)
whose dynamic equation taking into account the dynamic of
U
i
is
i
=
Ui
d
dt
(R
i
(s
i
))v
c
= u
i
(15)
using (13) and (14), it is easy to show that
i
=
1
R
i
i
+v
c
+
i
(16)
In summary the design for the path following of the ith
vehicle lead to a closed-loop system of the form
i
=
1
R
i
i
+v
c
+
i
i
= u
i
(17)
Our goal will be to design u
i
to synchronize the path
variables
i
while achieving lim
t
| s
i
v
c
| = 0. The
design of u
i
depends on variables of the ith vehicle and the
path parameter of the neighboring vehicles, in consequence, a
single information will be transmitted from each vehicle. It is
natural then to describe the topology of information exchange
between these vehicles by a graph G. Two vehicles i and j
are neighbors if they have access to the relative information
i

j
, in which case we let the ith and jth nodes of the
graph be connected by a link. To simplify our derivations
we assign an orientation to the graph by considering one of
the nodes to be the positive end of the link. For a graph of
n nodes and m edges, the n m incidence matrix D(G) is
dened as
d
ik
=
_
_
_
+1, if ith node is the positive end of the kth link
1, if ith vertex is the negative end of the kth edge
0, otherwise
(18)
The
i
-dynamic system can be viewed as a subsystem with
input U
i
and output y
i
=
i
/R
i
. Let the coordination
controller be designed as follows
u
i
= K
i
1
R
i
U
i
(19)
where U
i
is as proposed in [2] given by:
U
i
= F
i
_
m
i=1
d
ki
i
(
i
)
_
(20)
and F
i
{.} denotes the output of a static or a dynamic block.
If F
i
{.} is a static block we restrict as in [2] to be of the
form
y
i
= h
i
(U
i
) (21)
where h
i
: R R is a locally Lipschitz function satisfying
the sector property
U
i
h(U
i
) > 0, U
i
= 0 (22)
If F
i
{.} is a dynamic block of the form
i
= f
i
(
i
, U
i
)
i
R
n
(23)
y
i
= h
i
(
i
, U
i
)
the functions f
i
and h
i
are assumed to be locally Lipschitz
such that h
i
(0, 0) = 0 and f
i
(0, U
i
) = 0 U
i
= 0, the
main restriction in [2] imposed on (23) is that it be strictly
passive with a positive denite, radially unbounded storage
function function S
i
(
i
) satisfying
S
i
W(
i
) +U
i
y
i
i
denotes the difference variable and
i
(
i
) is given by
i
(
i
) =
m
i=1
d
ik
k
(
i
k
) (24)
with
k
is a sector nonlinearity, that is
x
k
(x) > 0, x and lim
|x|
_

0
k
()d = +
It is remarkable that feedback law (19) is implementable with
local information because it depends only on the neighbors
of the ith member.
Fig. 2. Block diagram for the path following coordination control.
With u
i
implemented as in (19), the total closed
loop system is represented as in Fig. 2, where
= D
, F = diag(F
1
, F
2
, . . . , F
n
), =
diag(
1
,
2
, . . . ,
m
), = diag(
1
,
2
, . . . ,
n
) and
C = diag(1/R
1
, 1/R
2
, . . . , 1/R
n
). We will investigate the
stability properties of the closed loop represented in Fig.
2, this will be done by considering passivity properties of
the feed forward block H
1
and the feedback block H
2
.
The passivity theorem will guarantee stability of the overall
interconnected systems. The main result for coordination
path following is presented in the following theorem:
Theorem 2: Consider the closed loop system represented
as in Fig.2, where the team of the marine vehicles are
interconnected in a formation as described in (18). Let the
coordinated path following control be designed as in (19).
The feedforward block H
1
is passive from

to , and the
feedback block H
2
is passive from to y. In particular the
origin (
, ) = 0 is global asymptotic stable.

Proof: We start by proving passivity of the feedforward
and feedback paths in Fig.2. For feedforward path, let the
storage function
V
ff
() =
m
i=1
_
i
k
0
k
()d (25)
Taking the time derivative of (25) will result in
V
ff
() =
m
i=1
i
(
i
i+1
)(

i+1
)
=

(26)
this shows that the feedforward path is indeed passive from
to . It follows that the path from y to is passive. In

order to show this, substitute

= D
(y+v
c
1) in (28) and
using the propriety that D1 = 0 and therefore we have
V
ff
() =
y (27)
To prove passivity of the feedback path H
2
, we denote by
I a subset of K for which F
i
{.} are dynamic blocks, we
consider the following storage function:
V
fb
=

iI
S
i
(
i
) (28)
where S
i
(
i
) =
1
2
i

i
. The time derivative of the storage
function V
fb
for the feedback path satises
V
fb

iI
i
K
i
i
+
iI
U
i
y
i

iI
i
K
i
i
+U
i/ I
U
i
y
i

iI
i
K
i
i
+
i/ I
U
i
h
i
(
i
, U
i
) (29)
since the static blocks satisfy (22), then
V
fb

iI
i
K
i
i
+
y (30)
from (30) we conclude that the feedback path is strictly
passive from to y. To conclude about the asymptotic
stability of the equilibrium (
, ) = 0, we consider the
following Lyapunov function
V = V
ff
+V
fb
(31)
it is straightforward to see from (27) and (29), that the time
derivative of (31) gives
V =
iI
i
K
i
i/ I
U
i
h
i
(
i
, U
i
) (32)
which is negative semidenite and implies that the trajec-
tories ((t),

(t)) are bounded on the interval [t
0
, t
0
+ T]
for any T within the maximal interval of existence. Since
the speed prole v
c
is bounded, it follows that ((t), (t)) is
bounded and consequently there are no nite escape times.
Thus the equilibrium ((t),

(t)) = 0 is stable. Asymptotic
stability of the origin is concluded by showing the set M =
_
, R
n
|
V = 0
_
is the largest invariant set containing
(
, ) = 0. This concludes the proof.

V. SIMULATIONS
This section contains the results of simulations that illus-
trate the performance obtained with the passivity based path
following coordinated control law developed in the paper.
Consider a group of n = 3 identical fully actuated marine
vehicles where the communication network induces a graph
with incidence matrix
D(G) =
_
_
1 0
1 1
0 1
_
_
that is only vehicles 1 and 2, and 2 and 3 are exchanging their
path parameters. It is required that marine vehicles keep a
formation pattern that consists of having them aligned along
a common vertical line. Specically, the desired paths are
parameterized as
[x
di
, y
di
] = [c
i
cos(
2
T
s
i
+
d
), c
i
sin(
2
T
s
i
+
d
)]
Figure 3 illustrates the transient behavior of the formation
marine vehicles as they assemble and maintain a vertical
line formation, while gures 5 and 4, plot the time evolution
of the and states respectively.
40 20 0 20 40
40
30
20
10
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
x [m]
y
[
m
]
Fig. 3. Desired and actual vehicles trajectories.
VI. CONCLUSION
This paper addressed the problem of coordinating a group
of fully actuated vehicles along a given path, while holding a
desired inter-vehicles formation pattern. A solution was pro-
posed that built on recent results on coordination passivity-
based design [1] and graph theory. Numerical simulations
illustrated the efciency of the proposed solution. Further
0 5 10 15 20
3
2
1
0
1
2
3
4
Time [s]
3
Fig. 4. Time evolution of the -states
0 5 10 15 20
1
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
Time [s]
3
Fig. 5. Time evolution of the -states
work is required to extend the methodology proposed to
address the problems, of discreet implementation of the
proposed control design.
APPENDIX
The following functions f
U
,
U
, f
and f
r
are dened
as follows
f
U
= (
m
v
m
u
m
u
m
v
)Ur sin cos (
d
u
m
u
cos
2
+
d
v
m
v
sin
2
)U
f
=
m
v
m
u
r + (
m
v
m
u
m
u
m
v
)r cos
2
+ (
d
u
m
u
d
u
m
u
) sin cos
fr =
d
r
m
r
+
m
ur
m
r
U
2
sin cos
U
=
cos
m
u
u
+
sin
m
v
=
sin
Um
u
u
+
cos
Um
v
v
notice that the matrix
_
cos
mu
sin
mv
sin
Umu
cos
Umv
_
is nonsingular since
its determinant is m
v
m
U
U then the transformation between
(
U
,
) and (
u
,
r
) always exists.
REFERENCES
[1] Godsil, C., G.Royle (2001). Algebraic Graph Theory. Graduated Texts
in Mathematics, Springer-Verlag New York, Inc.
[2] M. Arcak, Passivity as a design tool for group coordination, IEEE
Transactions on Automatic Control, 2006.
[3] C. W. Reynolds. Flocks, herds, and schools: a distributed behavioral
model, computer graphics.
[4] A. Fax and R. M. Murray. Information ow and cooperative control of
vehicle formations. 2004.
[5] J. Cortes and F. Bullo. Coordination and geometric optimization via
distributed dynamical systems. 2005.
[6] R. Skjetne, S. Moi and T. I. Fossen. Nonlinear formation control of
marine craft. In: Proc. of the 41st Conf. on Decision and Control
(CDC02). Vol. 2. Las Vegas, NV, USA. pp. 16991704.
[7] R. Ghabcheloo, A. M. Pascoal, C. Silvestre and I. Kaminer. Nonlinear
coordinated path following control of multiple wheeled robots with bidi-
rectional communication constraints. International Journal of Adaptive
Control and Signal Processing, 2007, vol 21(2-3), pp. 133157.
[8] J.Ghommam and F. Mnif, Nonlinear Path Following-based Formation
Control For a Fleet of Underactuated Surface Vessels, submitted to
IEEE Transaction on Industrial Electronics.
[9] J.Ghommam, O.Calvo and A.Roseneld, Coordinated path following
for multiple underactuated AUVs, In Proc of the IEEE/MTS Ocean
2008 Kobe, Japan.
[10] J.Ghommam, O.Calvo and A.Roseneld, Synchronization path fol-
lowing control of multiple underactuated marine crafts. In Proc of the
IEEE/MTS Ocean 2008 Quebec, Canada.
[11] J.Ghommam, F.Mnif, A.Benali and N. Derbel, Nonsingular Serret-
Frenet based path following control for an underactuated surface
vessel, accepted in Jornal of Dynamic and System Control, ASME,
In press.
[12] E. Brhaug, A. Pavlov, and K. Y. Pettersen, Cross-track formation
control of underactuated autonomous underwater vehicles, in Group
Coordination and Cooperative Control, K. Y. Pettersen, J. T. Gravdahl,
and H. Nijmeijer, Eds. Springer Verlag, 2006, vol. 336.
[13] R. Ghabcheloo, A. P. Aguiar, A. Pascoal, C. Silvestre, I. Kaminer,
and J. Hespanha, Coordinated path-following control of multiple
underactuated autonomous vehicles in the presence of communication
failures, in Proc. IEEE Conf. Decision and Control (CDC), San Diego,
CA, USA, Dec. 2006.
[14] T. I.Fossen. Marine control systems. Marine Cybernetics, Trondheim,
Norway, 2002.
[15] H. Khalil, (2002). Nonlinear systems. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-
Hall.
[16] C. Samson, Path following and time-varying feedback stabilization of
a wheeled mobile robot, in Proceedings of the ICARCV92, Singapore,
1992.

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I have contributed to a total of 14 publications during my PhD thesis

Published in IET Control Theory and Applications

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denotes the upper right-hand derivative, a is a

Int. J. Modelling, Identification and Control, Vol. 15, No. 2, 2012 97

= + is the error angle and is the angle

are given at the bottom of the page.

to zero. The first three equations together with the

as a virtual controller to stabilise y

The vehicles in formation should attain the

denotes the difference variable and ( )

attains its unique minimum when the desired

It is remarkable that feedback law (22) is

is global asymptotic stable.

to . It follows that the path from y to is passive. In

are bounded on the interval

This concludes the

= is chosen such that the matrix

and the tracking of the reference velocity

arbitrarily small and therefore, the

Robotics and Autonomous Systems 58 (2010) 727736

Corresponding author at: Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering,

denotes the position and the orientation

is a positive constant to be selected later. Substituting the

are weighting positive matrices. All the constants

are the control vector torques

. Consequently, all the signals in the closed-loop are

. We ran two tests for different scenarios. In the first, the

Institution of Mechanical Engineers

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) is globally uniformly asymptotically stable.

. The time derivative of V

5Ls 50, therefore the first and second terms of

) 5(0, 0, 0) is globally uniformly asymptoti-

R0 then for the ith, i 52, , n

is dened as the derivative of () with respect to s

were the real decentralised controller, then we would

which implies that xt 6 ax

and nally lim

Then the solution n(t) asymptotically converges to zero as time

Ecole de Technologie Sup erieure, Quebec University, Montreal, QC H2X 3X2,

Ecole de Technologie Sup erieure),

Ecole Polytechnique, Montreal, QC, Canada, in 1982

This article appeared in a journal published by Elsevier. The attached

denotes the position x

is the vector of the angular velocities, with

is the torque input vector with F

GAG. It is to be noted that if the

denote the vector of all

denote a vector of real variables assigned to each edge of

for all 1in, we assume that

and the robot's position as

and vector function _ x :

then by standard arguments, we obtain that

, then solving for the time derivative of the virtual

are the approximation parameters and

for the system

denotes the position x

. It is worth noticing that the matrix B

denotes the position x