Cooperative Control of Autonomous Ground Vehicles

Abstract: As autonomous ground vehicles grow in popularity,it is of interest to study how they could coordinate together andhow the technical systems can be implemented in a safe andeffective manner. The objective of this report is to examine howto autonomously move a formation of vehicles without collisionswith obstacles or other vehicles. This is done by considering threefundamental aspects: trajectory tracking, formation control andcollision avoidance. Firstly a trajectory tracking controller for anindividual vehicle is implemented, with the function of followinga desired trajectory. Secondly a displacement-based formationcontrol is explored for two models, the double-integrator modeland the nonholonomic model, with the objective of coordinatingmultiple vehicles to keep a certain formation. Lastly collisionavoidance is integrated in the formation control by adding arepulsive term to the formation controller. It is shown thatthe agents maintained formation while avoiding collision withobstacles and other agents. The implemented controllers wereverified through simulations in MATLAB.