Mobile robot formations differ in accordance to the mission, environment and robot abilities. In the case of decentralized control, the ability to achieve the shapes of these formations has to be built in the controllers of each robot. In this paper two types of basic formations are investigated, platoon and V-shape. Leader follower approach is applied for controllers design to drive each robot toward achieving the desired geometric shape of the formation
Formations required to move to given destinations can be controlled to arrive to a predefined geometric shape or to self-organize. For a large number of autonomous mobile robots, geometric formations pose too many constraints to achieving inter-robot positions. Self-organizing formations are more suitable for a large number of robots and generate formation shapes while avoiding robots collisions. In this paper are investigated approaches for self-organizing formations of large number of robots. The approach, inspired by hydrodynamic flow, results in an artificial velocity field approach that avoids local minima due to a combination of normal and tangential velocity commands associated to obstacles. These commands, for the formation of a large number of robots that are all subject to a velocity vector command to move to the goal, avoid inter robots collisions. In this paper is investigated the efficiency of this control approach in generating a formation shape and maintaining it during motion while moving toward a goal. Experimental and simulation results confirm the applicability of this control approach.
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