Formation Control of UAVs and Mobile Robots Using Self-organized Communication Topologies

Formation control in a robot swarm targets the overall swarm shape and relative positions of individual robots during navigation. Existing approaches often use a global reference or have limited topology flexibility. We propose a novel approach without these constraints, by extending the concept of ‘mergeable nervous systems’ to establish distributed asymmetric control via a self-organized wireless communication network. In simulated experiments with UAVs and mobile robots, we present a proof-of-concept for three sub-tasks of formation control: formation establishment, maintenance during motion, and deformation. We also assess the fault tolerance and scalability of our approach.