Leaderless Consensus of Ring-Networked Mobile Robots via Distributed Saturated Control

In this article, the global consensus problem of ring-networked nonholonomic systems with a saturated input is considered. Based on the Lyapunov method and appropriate related technologies, the stabilization of the nonholonomic systems is achieved toward consensus. Assuming that each agent has its own position information available in the global coordinates and can obtain the position information of its neighbors, global consensus is achieved asymptotically by using the designed distributed saturated controllers. A wireless local area network is set up with a local computer as the controller, having data transmitted through the wireless network so that the movement of the robots can be controlled. Consistent simulation and experimental results are presented to illustrate the practical design and theoretical analysis.