Distributed formation tracking of multi-robot systems with nonholonomic constraint via event-triggered approach

Abstract This paper investigates the distributed formation tracking problem of multi-robot systems with nonholonomic constraint via event-triggered approach. A variable transformation is firstly given to convert the formation tracking problem into the consensus-like issue. Then a novel type of distributed event-triggered control strategy is proposed under fixed topology and switching topology, which can guarantee multi-robot systems to produce desired geometric configuration from arbitrary initial positions and orientations for each robot, while the centroid of formation can follow one dynamic reference trajectory. Moreover, the novel event-triggering conditions under fixed topology and switching topology, which only need intermittent interaction between neighboring robots, are designed to assist the execution of distributed controllers. Based on the designed event-triggering conditions, the robot systems can effectively reduce the communication cost, energy consumption and mechanical wear, especially when the quantity of robots is huge. Finally, the effectiveness of theoretical results is illustrated by some numerical examples.