Distributed Prescribed Performance Formation Control for Nonholonomic Mobile Robots Under Noisy Communication

This paper addresses the formation control problem for a group of nonholonomic mobile robots (NMRs) under noisy communication. The communication signals with noisy information are transmitted among different robots by a directed graph. Only the individual mobile robot can obtain its true and feasible states without communication. To achieve the desired formation of multiple robots, the sensor-to-control signals with the noisy channel are modeled by a nonlinear function, which includes unknown and estimated parameters. Based on the adaptive control technique and robust control technique, the unknown parameters of noisy signal models are estimated and compensated, respectively. Meanwhile, the prescribed performances are enforced to standardize the transient performance of nonholonomic mobile robots. Then, a novel distributed prescribed performance formation control scheme is designed to guarantee formation errors evolving always with the predefined regions under noisy communication, achieving the desired formation. Based on the Lyapunov stability theory, the formation errors are proved to converge to a compact set, and closed states are bounded. Simulations are conducted to verify the correctness and effectiveness of the true signals estimation algorithm and distributed prescribed performance formation control laws.