Consensus Control of Nonholonomic Vehicles With Disturbances and Delays Using Only Position Measurements

ABSTRACT

In this work, we introduce a novel output‐feedback approach for the formation control of multiple nonholonomic vehicles that is robust to constant input disturbances and communication delays that vary over time. The proposed controller integrates an adaptive observer capable of reconstructing both the velocities and the external disturbances, together with a proportional‐plus‐damping‐injection term that enhances system stabilization. To address the nonholonomic constraints of the vehicles, the control law is made time‐varying through the use of a vanishing time‐dependent term. With sufficient damping injection, our method ensures that all vehicles achieve consensus on a desired formation pattern and that all velocities converge to zero, while providing exact estimates of the disturbances. The contribution lies not in the velocity‐disturbance observer, which is adopted from our previous work, but in its closed‐loop integration with a new delay‐aware, smooth, time‐varying formation controller, together with the corresponding Lyapunov–Krasovskii stability certificate. The effectiveness of the approach is demonstrated through realistic numerical simulations involving six Pioneer 3‐DX robots in the Gazebo environment.