Parametric and Implicit Features-Based UAV-UGVs Time-Varying Formation Tracking: Dynamic Approach

Flexible and robust Time-Varying Formation (TVF) tracking of Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGVs) guided by an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) is considered in this paper. The UAV–UGVs system control model is based on leader-follower approach, where the control scheme consists of two consecutive tasks, namely, deployment task and TVF tracking. Accordingly, two novel nonlinear controllers are proposed for controlling the UGVs formation. First, unlike the classical frameworks on UGVs formation tracking, for which only particular shapes are handled (e.g. circle, square, ellipse), we propose a UGVs deployment-controller ensuring to reach free-formation shapes. The key feature is in using the estimated implicit representation of the desired formation shape as a potential function to generate the UGVs reference trajectory. Second, in the TVF tracking task, a robust cascaded velocity/torque controller for UGVs is proposed based on kinematic and dynamic models. Differently from the classical backstepping framework, the key idea is in introducing an auxiliary control input, in such a way that the overall UGV dynamics is converted into a simpler and modular control structure. As such, the auxiliary input is used to control indirectly the actual UGVs velocity vector. A signum term is added to the torque-input to compensate for the unknown external disturbances and unmodeled dynamics. Numerical simulation shows the effectiveness of the proposed formation controllers compared with the case when the perfect velocity-tracking assumption holds. Experimental results are further provided using three festos Robtino robots to show the validity of the proposed TVF tracking velocity-control scheme.