Rendezvous of multiple nonholonomic unicycles-based on backstepping

Rendezvous problem of nonholonomic unicycles has been considered in this paper and nonlinear distributed controllers based on backstepping are constructed to guarantee the consensus of both position and direction simultaneously. Cascaded theory of nonlinear system is utilised to reduce the rendezvous problem of nonholonomic unicycles to consensus problem of moving direction and consensus problem of position, respectively. The uncontrollable challenge of position system after consensus of moving direction has been successfully removed through dilated coordinate transformation. Then, a modified backstepping methodology based on the coupling structure of position system is derived to guarantee the consensus of each unicycle's position. In the end, not only consensus of position but also consensus of direction has been realised for multiple nonholonomic unicycles using the controllers proposed in this paper. Simulation results using Matlab illustrate the effectiveness of the results of this paper.