Integral terminal sliding mode formation control of non-holonomic robots using leader follower approach

SUMMARY Multi-robot formation control has become an important area of research due to its advantages and applications. This paper presents multi-robot formation control using a leader–follower approach without considering the leader's velocity information or estimation. The leader–follower formation is formulated by incorporating the model uncertainties and disturbances. A novel formation controller is presented using integral terminal sliding mode (ITSM) control, which drives the formation tracking error convergence to zero in finite-time. The stability of the close-loop control scheme is verified by using Lyapunov theory. Furthermore, obstacle detection and avoidance are incorporated to avoid collision while maintaining the formation. The effectiveness of the proposed controller is verified and validated using sine and lamniscate curve trajectories. Moreover, the performance of the proposed ITSM formation controller is compared with the standard linear sliding mode (LSM) control.