Formation control of mobile robots using decentralized nonlinear model predictive control

This paper presents a distributed nonlinear model predictive controller (NMPC) for formation control of a group of omnidirectional mobile robots. In this approach the controllers are distributed to the agents, and the terms of coupling allow the use of fixed and time-varying formations. The path following problem is expressed through a dynamic model of the robot's state errors, and the coordination problem is solved through adjustments in the robots' speeds combined with the path update rate for each robot. Experimental results are provided to demonstrate the performance of the proposed control strategy using real and virtual robots.