Distributive module UWB‐based localization, navigation, and following tracking control of multiple omnidirectional mobile robots with different communication topologies

Abstract Recently, many formation controls were developed. However, most of them do not consider practical requirements, for example, real‐time localization and navigation. To accomplish the following tracking control of multiple omnidirectional mobile robots (ODMRs) in the board GPS‐less region, the Residual Bi‐LSTM (RBLSTM)‐based distributive module UWB network (DM‐UWBN) for wireless localization and navigation, and the adaptive RNN‐based following tracking control (ARNN‐FTC) are designed. The excellent localization results by RBLSTM are summarized as follows: (i) average static pose error (0.03 m, 5.3°) in a triangular subregion of 6.7 × 7.8 m and (ii) the average dynamic pose error (0.03 m, 9.1°) for a moving robot with the average velocity 0.24 m/s in a region of 13.5 × 7.8 m. They are much better than the state‐of‐the‐art methods. Moreover, the totally dynamic uncertainties of each ODMR are compensated by the ARNN‐FTC with reduced input power. Due to the multiprocessing times of DM‐UWBN (150 ms), WiFi communication (30 ms), and ARNN‐FTC (5 ms), the following tracking control tasks of multi‐robot are more challenging. Besides the simulation for the hardware‐in‐the loop of two ODMRs in the unidirectional and bidirectional WiFi communications, their implementations certify the effectiveness and practicality of the proposed approach.