Formation control of nonholonomic unmanned ground vehicles via unscented Kalman filter-based sensor fusion approach.

Abstract This paper investigates the formation control of nonholonomic unmanned ground vehicles via unscented Kalman filter-based sensor fusion approach. According to the kinematic model of single unmanned ground vehicle, the formation model of multiple unmanned ground vehicles is established. Note that the physical leader is considered instead of a virtual leader, which is more realistic. The formation control problem is converted to the stability problem of an error dynamic system. An asymptotic stability condition of the error dynamic system is derived by designing an appropriate Lyapunov function. The leader-following formation is well formed through designing effective control vectors and utilizing unscented Kalman filter-based state estimation algorithm for each follower. Some simulation examples are provided to verify the effectiveness of the proposed formation control algorithm.