Secure Leader–Follower Formation Control of Networked Mobile Robots Under Replay Attacks

This article is concerned with the leader–follower formation control problem of multiple networked mobile robots (MRs), where the information exchanges over communication networks among the MRs suffer from replay attacks. The central aim is to develop an effective secure control scheme for the multiple-MR system such that the desired leader–follower formation control objectives are accomplished regardless of the simultaneous presence of replay attacks, network-induced delays, system uncertainties, and external disturbances. Toward this aim, an extended state observer is first constructed to estimate the unknown nonlinear terms consisting of system uncertainties and external disturbances. Then, leveraging the time-stamp technique, a dedicated data packet analyzer is developed for each MR to detect and handle replay attacks. Furthermore, a secure leader–follower formation control scheme, consisting of a network-based cooperative kinematic control law and two local kinetic control laws, is designed. Finally, both simulation and experiment results are provided to validate the efficacy of the proposed secure leader–follower formation control scheme.