A curve extension design for coordinated path following control of unicycles along given convex loops

This article utilises a dynamic model of unicycles to address the convergence of vehicle formation about closed convex curves. A novel curve extension method, extending the target loop along the vector from the loop centre to the point on the loop, is proposed to construct a family of level curves and the existence of a loop function on a tubular-like neighbourhood is proved by referring to the tubular neighbourhood theorem. Path following control is derived based on the loop function which incorporated into the arc-length function to propose the solution to coordinated formation control. We show how backstepping technique, Lyapunov-based theory and graph theory can be combined together to construct the coordinated path following controller under the bidirectional commutation topology. It is proved that the designed cooperative control system is asymptotically stable if the graph is connected. The proposed method is effective for a skewed superellipse, which is a type of curve that includes circles, ellipses and rounded parallelograms.