Formation tracking of multi-robot systems with switching directed topologies based on Udwadia-Kalaba approach.

In this paper, a distributed formation tracking protocol is proposed for multi-robot systems with switching directed topologies based on the Udwadia-Kalaba approach. The basic idea is to use the consensus-based scheme to reconstruct formation tracking control requirement into a second-order constraint first, and then apply the Udwadia-Kalaba approach to obtain the constraint force required to achieve the formation tracking, and afterward derive the explicit equations of motion for the constrained multi-robot systems for the control algorithm design. The convergence analysis of the tracking error system is conducted to affirm that the proposed control algorithm can achieve the formation tracking when the switching directed topologies have a directed spanning tree across each switching time interval. Numerical simulations are performed to validate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm. • The proposed strategy reconstructs the formation tracking requirement as a constrained motion problem. • The constraint forces for the kinematic performance constraints are formulated in an explicit form. • The proposed strategy is based on switching directed topologies and only needs to set two control parameters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]