Motion Planning of Multiple Mobile Robots with “A Strategy of Following Another Robot” Which Gives Order to Behavior of Robots

In this paper, we propose“a strategy of following another robot”for motion planning of multiple mobile robot system, which gives order to behavior of robots from the viewpoint of angular velocities of robots. In the strategy, one robot (Follower, F) tries to follow another robot ( Leader, L) which is in front of F and goes in the same direction as F. The strategy is implemented to Virtual Impedance Method, which was proposed by authors. Each robot has two kinds of impedance mode: one is avoiding mode, in which each robot moves individually and independently. The other is following mode, in which each follows L by means of keeping constant distance from L. Each robot decide the mode with other robots in real time by using rule-based method. The simulation indicates effectiveness of the proposed strategy from angular velocities of robots.