Robust Leader-Following Consensus Control of Multiple Nonholonomic Lunar Wheeled Robot Systems with Disturbances and Time-Varying Input Delays

To tackle the leader-following consensus tracking problem in multiple nonholonomic lunar wheeled robot systems under disturbances and time-varying input delays, a robust control strategy composed of 3 key components is developed in this paper. First, distributed state and input observers are designed to obtain the leader’s state/input information, while extended state observers are used to estimate the disturbances. Then, a compound consensus controller is developed by integrating a nonlinear delay compensator with the backstepping control technique to handle unknown disturbances and attenuate the adverse effects of input delays. Furthermore, the leader-following consensus analysis via Lyapunov–Krasovskii stability theory is conducted. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed control strategy is validated through numerical simulations involving a group of lunar wheeled robots subject to longitudinal slip disturbances and time-varying input delays.