A tunable kinematic model‐based approach to ternary control design for the UGV swarm system: Constraint and uncertainty

Abstract In various fields such as military, agriculture, and transportation, unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) has brought significant economic and social benefits. This study proposes a ternary control design for the UGV swarm system to accomplish formation and trajectory tracking tasks. First, the tunable kinematic model of the UGV swarm system is established using two improved artificial potential functions (APFs). Second, based on the Udwadia–Kalaba (U‐K) bridging approach, the analytical expression for the control input of the UGV swarm system's dynamic model is obtained. The control design is skillfully transformed into a constraint‐following problem. Then, considering the system's uncertainties, the ternary control input is derived by integrating the adaptive robust controller. Finally, a swarm system consisting of six heterogeneous UGVs is used as an example to validate the control algorithm's effectiveness and flexibility through simulations. In contrast to the robust control, the ternary control outperforms in terms of both convergence time and magnitude of the control error. Furthermore, the real‐time performance and robustness of the ternary control are validated on an embedded controller (MicroAutoBox II, DS1401) with limited resources. This paper offers a practical control design method for swarm system with predefined constraints and uncertainties.