On the use of teamwork software for multi-robot formation control

In recent years there has been a growing interest in multi-robots systems, where a group of N robots are working collaboratively in order to execute a given task. One specific example is multi-robot formation maintenance, where the goal is for a group of robots to move while maintaining relative positions with respect to each other (typically describing a specific geometric shape). Indeed, there exists vast literature on various techniques for maintaining formations in a variety of settings. Different controllers have advantages and disadvantages which can be complementary. Little attention has been given to the possibility of integrating together multiple, complementary, formation controllers for greater robustness. For example, it is possible to have the robot team switch between controllers. Separation-bearing controllers (SBC) rely heavily on the robots sensors [4, 2, 7]. Communications-based controllers rely instead on reliable communications from one robot to the others [3]. If all members of the team dynamically switch between these controllers, together, it would allow the team to compensate for sensor faults using communications, and to compensate for communication faults, by relying on sensors. Such integration is a formidable challenge. The execution of a multi-robot formation controller is often distributed, with each robot individually executing a program associated with its role. For an integrated formation system to be effective, it must have all the robots in the team switch together from one type of controller to another. Tight coordination is required not just in deciding on the time of the switch, but also in its contents—all robots must switch to the