International Journal of Applied Engineering Research ISSN 0973-4562 Volume 11, Number 9 (2016) pp 6583-6590 © Research India Publications. http://www.ripublication.com Decentralized Non-Linear Control of Leader-Follower Formation of Multiple Autonomous Mobile Robots Azza El-Sayed Bayoumi Ibrahim Department of Computers and Systems, Electronics Research Institute, Giza, Egypt E-mail: [email protected] maintain the desired formation parameters (distance and orientation) with the leader robot. The main critique of the leader-follower approach is that the formation is depended on the leader for achieving the goal and this over-reliance on a single agent may be undesirable. In spite of these shortages, the leader-follower architectures are particularly appreciated for their simplicity and scalability [9]. The formation of a team of autonomous mobile robots with nonholonomic constraints is considered as a nonlinear system. Linearization techniques are used to deal with the nonlinearities. Although the nonlinear formation system can be linearized, there exist many problems in practice. Research papers try to handle these problems as in [10,15, and 17], so using a nonlinear control method is preferred. Sliding Mode Control (SMC) is a non-linear systematic control method. Its main advantage is the sliding motion exhibits complete robustness to system uncertainties [12, 13]. Some previous works utilized SMC to design the followers controllers [11,14]. However, this control strategy has two main drawbacks: the well-known chattering phenomenon and the sensitivity of the system motion to disturbances during the reaching phase. Thus, efforts have been made to minimize or even remove the chattering and the reaching phase. A time varying sliding mode control (TVSMC) method is suggested to eliminate the reaching-phase [4]. In this method, the sliding surface translates in the phase plane with constant slope without rotating. The sliding surface should be chosen such that the error along this surface vanishes. In this paper, the formation controller is designed based on TVSMC method. The fundamental idea is that the timevarying sliding surface passes through the initial system states at the start of the motion and then moves towards a predetermined time-invariant sliding surface with the form of shifting and/or rotating [5]. Thus, the robustness of the trajectory for the nominal system can be guaranteed from the initial time instant [4]. Therefore, TVSMC technique can be a very powerful solution to the problem of leader-follower trajectory tracking control in the presence of disturbances. Abstract Control of the cooperative multi-robot system is one of the most challenging problems. This paper investigates a novel implement of integral time varying sliding mode control (ITVSMC) on the leader-follower formation of nonholonomic mobile robots with bounded control inputs. The objective of the controller is to form up and maintain the follower robots in tracking the leader motion. The controller parameters are automatically computed using mathematical formulas. The annoying chattering problem in the control law is solved using the boundary layer technique. The effectiveness of the suggested strategy is verified by simulating the system using MATLAB/SIMULINK software. Simulation results demonstrate that the designed control strategy success in getting suitable values of controller parameters resulting in perfect performance for different system conditions. Also, it is proved that the time-varying sliding surface technique is more accurate even in the presence of external disturbances than the conventional time-invariable sliding surface. Therefore, ITVSMC technique is a good solution to the problem of leader-followers trajectory tracking in the presence of disturbances. Keywords: Formation control; two-wheeled mobile robots; Input constraints; time varying sliding mode control. Introduction In recent years, research on coordination control of multiple mobile robots system has attracted many researchers attention and shown its broad application prospect in the military, space exploration, medical, service industry and other fields [2]. Cooperative/formation control appears because a group of robots can accomplish a mission more efficiently over a single robot. Differential drive wheeled mobile robots (WMR) are usually employed in multi-robots applications, due to their fast manoeuvring, low cost and simplicity [1]. Different strategies have been introduced to control the robots formation [3], the most popular approaches are: (i) The behaviour-based approach [6], where each vehicle is described by several desired behaviours and the final control is computed from a weighting of the each behaviour; (ii) The virtual structure approach [7], where the entire agents are treated as a single structure. The desired motion is assigned to the virtual structure which trails trajectories for each member in the formation to follow; (iii) The leader-follower approach [8]. In this approach, one of the robots is selected as a leader, while other robots are followers. The leader moves along a predesigned collision free trajectory and the followers Problem Formulation Given a group of mobile robots (WMRs), one robot is selected as a leader and the others are as followers. It is assumed that the leader robot moves along a predefined collision-free trajectory, the vector ( , ) can be measured and passed to each follower. It is required to design a control law such that a desired formation for the whole system can be achieved while tracking the motion of the leader. The objective of the controller of each follower is to find the values of its 6583 International Journal of Applied Engineering Research ISSN 0973-4562 Volume 11, Number 9 (2016) pp 6583-6590 © Research India Publications. http://www.ripublication.com translational, and rotational velocities ( ) such that the relative position errors to the leader tend to zero. Leader-Follower Model In an inertial reference frame, the configuration of the robot i is given by the position of the centre between its two wheels (xi,yi) and the angle θi of its heading direction. The heading direction is the line perpendicular to the axes of wheel rotations, and it is positive in the direction of forward motion. The position of the robot is defined by qi = (xi,yi,θi ). The kinematics of a robot "i" is described by Equation (1) and the nonholonomic constraint, where the driving wheels are assumed to roll purely and do not slip is expressed by Equation (2), [16]. Controller Design Based on the TVSMC method, the switching surface starts moving uniformly (i.e. with a constant velocity) in the state space and then it stops at a time instant > , where is the initial time, the details of the method is well described by Andrzej Bartoszewicz in [5]. As shown in Fig2. Once the surface reaches the origin of the error coordinate frame, it stops moving and remains fixed and time-invariant. Where the translational velocity vi and the angular velocity ωi are the input control signals. Figure 2: Time Varying Sliding Surface phase portrait A follower tracking errors and the errors rates are introduced as: , and , and (7) To develop the ITVSMC approach, the integral-type time varying sliding surface is defined twice times as declared in Figure 2, for time t ϵ { . Figure 1: Sketch of leader-follower coordinated (8) Where, ci, Ai and Bi are constants. The selection of these constants will be addressed later. Since the considered surface stops moving at the time , for any t ≥ it is fixed and can be described as follows: The appropriate modelling of leader-follower formation is derived in [11]. It is evident from Fig.1 that (xL,yL) represents the leader’s position, and (xF,yF) for the follower’s position. The angle between leader’s and the x-axis is θL and the angle between follower’s and the x-axis is θF. The relative distance between the leader and the follower is represented by and it is inclination with the x-axis by the angle . Therefore, the formation parameters can be expressed by Eq. (3). , (3) (9) Therefore, two controllers are designed and switching between them is done at time or when the surfaces reach the origin [4]. In the period of , the sliding surface is On the other hand, the relationships between velocities and angles are obtained by Equations (4), (5), and (6). 6584 International Journal of Applied Engineering Research ISSN 0973-4562 Volume 11, Number 9 (2016) pp 6583-6590 © Research India Publications. http://www.ripublication.com fixed and described by equations (9). The controller is designed as in the conventional SMC [12], the variable s is differentiated and equated to zero to get the equivalent control signal on the sliding surface. (10) (11) Since the desired formation parameters described by and are chosen to be constants values, , and . Then equations (4), (5), and (6) are substituting into the resulting formulas, the control signals can be obtained with the knowledge that and . Therefore, equations (12) and (13) express the final control signal form. Sliding Surface Parameters Design Subject to Input Signal Constraint The constants As, Bs and Cs are chosen in such a way that the representative point of the system at the initial time belongs to the switching surface and subject to a constraint on the input signal, such that the maximum admissible values of the input signals are u1max and u2max. It means that the following inequalities should be held. and (17) Where, u1max, u2max are constants, which satisfies the following conditions: and (12) (18) Which imply that there exist such strictly positive constants satisfy the following conditions. (13) To keep the system trajectory staying perfect on the sliding surface despite the influences of the disturbances, the reachability condition is essential. Such a condition is satisfied by using the switching function sgn (si ), is the switching gain constant, should be chosen to compensate for the system disturbances, in which the upper limit of the disturbances is assumed to be known. The sgn (si ) function is always replaced by sat (si / i ) to avoid occurring of fast oscillation, where i is a small positive value which expresses the boundary layer thickness, the mathematical description of it is declared in Equation (14). (19) (20) The optimal switching surface parameters are given by the following formulas, considering are strictly positive constants, which represent the lower bound of the absolute value of control signal multiplier, therefore, the complete derivation is illustrated in [4]. , , (21) (14) Similarly, for the period , the second control law is designed, but using the sliding surfaces described by equation (8). Using the same procedure, the control signals can be obtained as: (22) Where and are the initial values of the linear and the angular separation errors which depend on the initial position of the follower and the leader vehicles. The switching surface stops moving at the time instants, , computed by Equations (21) and (22). (15) (16) According to Equations (15) and (16), the control signals values are dependent on the values of the parameters of the sliding surfaces, As, Bs and Cs and, ks. Figure 3 illustrates the block diagram of the overall controlled system of the leaderfollower approach. Simulation Results The effectiveness of the proposed algorithm can be verified by a numerical simulation using Matlab/Simulink software. The reference desired trajectory is given by y = g(x) = sin(0.5x)+0.5x+1, and x( ) = . Four robots are used to form an example of analysis, one robot act as a leader and three act as followers. For a case study, the initial conditions of the leader robot (xL(0), yL(0), θL(0)) = (3,2,0), and for a follower ( , ) = (1.5,0.7,2 ) as in follower 3 in Table [1]. The desired separation parameters are chosen as and . The parameters of the designed controller are computed according to the proposed criteria such that , and and recorded in table [1]. After several running of the simulator, it is found that the suitable value of the bounded layer thickness is equal Figure 3: The controlled system block diagram of one follower 6585 International Journal of Applied Engineering Research ISSN 0973-4562 Volume 11, Number 9 (2016) pp 6583-6590 © Research India Publications. http://www.ripublication.com to 0.2 of the corresponding feedback gains ( . Figure (4-a) shows that the follower robot can accurately track the leader trajectory with very low steady state errors, the corresponding error signals are depicted in Figure (4-b) and (4-c). There is no reaching phases and the sliding mode is starting from the initial time as shown in Fig. 5. The control signals are drawn in Figure 6. Figure 5: The behaviours of the sliding surfaces s1 & s2 based on ITVSMC Figure 4: (a) The Leader-Follower trajectories based on ITVSMC. (b) The linear separation error signals; (c) The angular separation error signals Figure 6: The control signals u1 & u2 based on ITVSMC The proposed algorithm is also tested in controlling a group of robots. Two different cases are suggested. 6586 International Journal of Applied Engineering Research ISSN 0973-4562 Volume 11, Number 9 (2016) pp 6583-6590 © Research India Publications. http://www.ripublication.com In the first case, three followers are put in different initial positions, and it is required from each follower to track the leader with the same separation parameters. Simulation results are recorded in table [1], and the system responses are depicted in Figure (7-a). Referring to the figure, it is evident that all followers track the leader trajectory precisely, and the proposed methodology success in determining the appropriate controllers’ parameters without trial and error method. Note that the follower which starts far from the leader takes a longer time to reach the desired situation. performances are drawn in Fig.(7-b), As shown in the figure the three followers track the leader correctly. The designed controller for each follower is able to get precise values of its parameters, which verify the powerful of the proposed method. Table 2: System parameters with no disturbances for different desired positions, (Case2). Case 2 Table 1: System parameters with no disturbances for different followers initial positions, (Case1). Case 1 parameters of Controller (u1) parameters of Controller (u2) Switching gains Steady-state errors Desired Parameters Follower 1 Follower 2 Follower 3 Initial conditions A1 B1 C1 A2 B2 C2 K1 K2 e1s.s e2s.s 5 0.9 2 0.6 0.78 0.4 -0.14 0.84 0.301 0.051 5.7e-10 4.2e-12 3.1 0.51 0.1 -0.25 2.7 0.01 -0.15 5.4 0.01 0.001 0 0 Follower 1 Follower 2 Follower 3 parameters of Controller (u1) 1.5 0.7 -1.5 0.45 0.77 0.2 -0.12 1.09 0.5 0.4 -5e-11 2.27e-16 parameters of Controller (u2) Switching gains Steady-state errors A1 B1 C1 A2 B2 C2 K1 K2 e1s.s e2s.s 3 0.5 -2 0.51 0.71 0.2 -0.14 1.19 0.301 0.051 -4.63e-9 1.1e-15 4 0.6 -3 0.57 0.63 0.1 -0.16 1.97 0.01 0.001 -1.8e-7 0 5 0.9 -4 0.45 0.47 -0.2 0.13 1.14 0.5 0.4 -4.2e-5 -5.6e-10 Figure (7-b): Multi-followers behaviours for different desired relative position. Comparing TVSMC with Conventional SMC methods The SMC controller is also simulated, and the same previous case study is used to test it. The follower trajectory designed by the ITVSMC and the SMC is compared with the leader trajectory and drawn in Fig. (8-a). In the case of the SMC method the follower tracks the leader with steady state errors equal to e1s.s = 0.0315, and e2s.s = 9.82e-8. But for TVSMC, the error is avoided. The sliding surfaces are registered and illustrated in Figure 9, which shows that the sliding surfaces based on SMC take a longer time to reach the sliding mode than the TVSMC. Figure (7-a): Multi-followers behaviours for different initials positions. For the second case, the induced controllers are also examined by another situation of the multiple followers. All followers started from the same position and asked to follow the leader with different separation parameters. All results and parameters of this case are demonstrated in table2. The system 6587 International Journal of Applied Engineering Research ISSN 0973-4562 Volume 11, Number 9 (2016) pp 6583-6590 © Research India Publications. http://www.ripublication.com To demonstrate the robustness properties of the ITVSM from the beginning, Both controllers are tested by the same case study, but the system is suffered from external additive disturbances and the results are drawn in Figure (8-b). It is evident that a bad vibration appears on SMC trajectory in a period which makes the system out of control over this period, but the controlled system under TVSMC can withstand the disturbances more than the SMC. Moreover, the ITVSMC algorithm calculates the controller parameters by itself. On the other hand, the SMC parameters are adjusted manually by trial and error method which is a tedious method resulting in wasting the efforts and consuming the time. Finally, the designed controller based on the ITVSMC is faster, more accurate, more robust than the one designed based on the SMC. Figure 8: (a) Comparison bet. SMC & ITVSMC with nodisturbances. (b) The comparison with system disturbances 6588 International Journal of Applied Engineering Research ISSN 0973-4562 Volume 11, Number 9 (2016) pp 6583-6590 © Research India Publications. http://www.ripublication.com [2] [3] [4] [5] Figure 9: The behaviors of the sliding surfaces s1 & s2 based on the SMC & ITVSMC [6] Conclusion This paper introduces a framework for controlling a group of autonomous two-wheeled mobile robots based on leaderfollower approach control in the presence of environmental disturbances and control input constraint. A decentralized cooperative control for each follower has been implemented employing a time-varying sliding mode nonlinear controller. Numerical simulations of the designed control strategy are done. The suggested approach is tested using different status of the system. The results show that the follower robots can accurately track the leader trajectory with very low steady state errors even there exist an additive bounded external disturbances. A comparison between the TVSMC and the conventional SMC is carried out. It is proven that the time-varying sliding surface can get faster error convergence and less steady state error than the time-invariable sliding surface. Also, it is noticed that the system behaviors based on the TVSMC are more resistance to the external disturbances than the SMC. Moreover, the time of converging to the equilibrium point is lower than the conventional sliding mode control method. In a case of SMC simulation, the parameters are changed to choose the best ones after a process of trial and error. However, this is not valid in the case of an actual system. But the ITVSMC algorithm develops accurate calculations for the controller parameters. 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