A control allocation approach for energetic swarm control of wheeled mobile robots

In this paper, an energetic swarm controller is developed that controls the swarm temperature, swarm centre position, and swarm potential energy. A sliding control approach is combined with a control allocation process to solve the overactuated control problem. The control allocation problem is solved using nonlinear programming software which allows the optimization problem to be solved with input saturation constraints. Furthermore, a low level trajectory controller based on dynamic feedback linearization is developed in order to improve the trajectory tracking performance of the individual swarm members. Application to a group of wheeled mobile robots is used to demonstrate the approach. Together, these results allow energetic swarm controllers to be implemented on wheeled mobile robot (WMR) systems with uncertainty and input saturation constraints.