Fault tolerant kinematic control of platoons of autonomous vehicles

In this paper the fault tolerance capabilities of a kinematic control technique for platoons of autonomous vehicles are investigated. The proposed technique is based on the definition of suitable task functions that are handled in the framework of singularity-robust task-priority inverse kinematics algorithms. The control scheme is tested in simulation in a mission requiring 8 vehicles to entrap a moving target in presence of obstacles to be avoided; the mission is accomplished despite failure of one vehicle that, once stopped, becomes an obstacle to be avoided itself.