Cluster space linear parameter varying control of robot formations

Abstract

Within the Cluster Space robot formation control scheme, a new approach is presented where a cascaded control scheme is proposed. On one hand, a simple secondary (inner) loop is used to control the formation’s velocity in Robot Space, while on the other hand a quasi-LPV (Linear Parameter Varying) approach is employed for the design of the main (outer) control loop where the geometry and kinematics of the problem are captured by the LPV formulation. Certain aspects of the design such as stability are tackled, and the use of parameter-dependent weighting functions is discussed through a design example tested in simulations in order to illustrate the use of the method.