Regular Tessellation-Based Collective Movement for a Robot Swarm with Varying Densities, Scales, and Shapes

Abstract

In complex swarm robotic applications that perform different tasks such as transportation and observation, robot swarms should construct and maintain a formation to adapt and move as a single large-scale robot. For example, transportation and observation tasks require unique robot swarms with either high densities to support the weight of the transported objects or low densities to avoid overlapping field of views and avoid obstructions. Previous literature has not focused on structure optimization because swarming provides a largecollective capability. This paper proposes a leader-follower-controlled collective movement method by calculating direction and distance potentials between robots based on geometric constraints, constricting robot positioning along radial gradients around the leader robot according to these potentials. This paper demonstrates a robot swarm applying the proposed method while maintaining formations with different densities while moving and evaluates the robot swarm structure-maintaining performance.