Formation Control of Nonholonomic Mobile Robots Using Distributed Estimators

This brief addresses the distributed estimator of each follower NMR, which uses its own information and the information of its neighboring NMRs, is designed to estimate the leader's states. By means of these estimates, a formation controller is proposed for the follower NMRs that are also required to track the leader NMR. Lyapunov function techniques are employed to analyze the distributed estimator as well as the formation controller. Simulation and experiment examples are presented to illustrate the theoretical results.