NMPC-based Visual Leader-Follower Formation Control for Wheeled Mobile Robots

This paper proposes a novel strategy for Leader-Follower formation control based on NMPC using visual information for wheeled mobile robots. The formation task is to follow a visual path whose control problem is solved in the image plane for the leader robot. With the proposed strategy it is possible to increase the range of real applications through the use of arbitrary visual paths in conjunction with already consolidated Leader-Follower approach. Time-varying formations are dealt with a classical method to stability guarantee and a new approach to feasibility guarantee. Experimental results with a nonholonomic platform show the performance of the proposed control scheme.