Optimal design of formation tracking control for a tractor-trailer robotic system with omni-directional wheels

This paper addresses the formation tracking control and optimal selection of control design parameters for a tractor-trailer omni-directional type robotic system with on-axle hitching. We design a sliding mode controller incorporating the dynamics of the system to drive the tractor robot to track a desired trajectory and the trailer robot to maintain a desired orientation with respect to the tractor. We also define an optimization problem to find the control design parameters that maximize the control performance and solve it using meta-heuristics optimization techniques. The stability of the developed controller is studied using Lyapunov theorem. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed methodology using simulation results. It is concluded that the proposed control methodology can be adopted in real-time experiments and is applicable in real-world applications for good formation tracking performance under large disturbances.