Leader–follower formation control of nonholonomic mobile robots with input constraints

The paper deals with leader–follower formations of nonholonomic mobile robots, introducing a formation control strategy alternative to those existing in the literature. Robots’ control inputs are forced to satisfy suitable constraints that restrict the set of leader possible paths and admissible positions of the follower with respect to the leader. A peculiar characteristic of the proposed strategy is that the follower position is not rigidly fixed with respect to the leader but varies in proper circle arcs centered in the leader reference frame.