Obstacle avoidance and role assignment algorithms for robot formation control

An obstacle avoidance mechanism is developed in this paper for formation control of multiple mobile robots. This mechanism is designed based on the sequential situations when the robots likely have a chance to collide with each other. First, the obstacle avoidance is enabled if the distance between robot and obstacle is smaller than a designed distance and the obstacle is located on the way where the robot is moving to. Second, the time to turn on the mechanism for obstacle avoidance is decided by a predefined distance. Finally, an alternative path is generated for the robot to avoid obstacles by using a vector operation. Meanwhile, a robot behavior-based formation control is also constructed which has architecture of three levels. The developed mechanism is applied to the formation control of a group omni-directional driven robots. Simulation and experimental results show that the proposed algorithm is efficient for robot formation control.

[1]  Tzuu-Hseng S. Li,et al.  Fuzzy shooting control of car-like soccer robot , 2001, Proceedings of IEEE Region 10 International Conference on Electrical and Electronic Technology. TENCON 2001 (Cat. No.01CH37239).

[2]  Ronald C. Arkin,et al.  An Behavior-based Robotics , 1998 .

[3]  Camillo J. Taylor,et al.  A vision-based formation control framework , 2002, IEEE Trans. Robotics Autom..

[4]  Manuela M. Veloso,et al.  Task Decomposition, Dynamic Role Assignment, and Low-Bandwidth Communication for Real-Time Strategic Teamwork , 1999, Artif. Intell..

[5]  Xiao Peng,et al.  Fuzzy behavior-based control of mobile robots , 2004, IEEE Transactions on Fuzzy Systems.

[6]  Yin-Tien Wang,et al.  Dynamic role assignment algorithm for robot formation control , 2007, 2007 IEEE/ASME international conference on advanced intelligent mechatronics.

[7]  S. Ploen,et al.  A survey of spacecraft formation flying guidance and control (part 1): guidance , 2003, Proceedings of the 2003 American Control Conference, 2003..

[8]  Kar-Han Tan,et al.  High Precision Formation Control of Mobile Robots Using Virtual Structures , 1997, Auton. Robots.

[9]  Tucker R. Balch,et al.  Behavior-based formation control for multirobot teams , 1998, IEEE Trans. Robotics Autom..

[10]  Ching-Chang Wong,et al.  A method for obstacle avoidance and shooting action of the robot soccer , 2001, Proceedings 2001 ICRA. IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (Cat. No.01CH37164).

[11]  Alan Liu,et al.  Applying Various Reference Types to Formation Control of Mobile Robots , 2007, J. Inf. Sci. Eng..

[12]  Jaydev P. Desai,et al.  A Graph Theoretic Approach for Modeling Mobile Robot Team Formations , 2002, J. Field Robotics.

[13]  Vijay Kumar,et al.  Modeling and control of formations of nonholonomic mobile robots , 2001, IEEE Trans. Robotics Autom..