A distributed multi-robot formation control method

Formation control of multiple wheeled robots with nonholonomic constraints and limited acceleration has been studied in this paper. A distributed formation control method taking acceleration into account in Leader-following structure is proposed. The method uses only local sensing information and the velocity information obtained by communication. Little communication through wireless network allows robots to share their velocity information. We also developed an artificial identity mark for large scale multi-robot systems. The identity mark can not only distinguish different robots, but also measure the distance and orientation between the robots. Extensive experiments have been carried out to validate our strategy both in simulation and with real robots.

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

[2]  François Michaud,et al.  Dynamic robot formations using directional visual perception , 2002, IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems.

[3]  François Michaud,et al.  Ultrasonic relative positioning for multi-robot systems , 2008, 2008 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

[4]  Wei Zou,et al.  Nonholonomic mobile robot formation control with kinodynamic constraints , 2006, PCAR '06.

[5]  Erfu Yang,et al.  A Multiagent Fuzzy Policy Reinforcement Learning Algorithm with Application to Leader-Follower Robotic Systems , 2006, 2006 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems.

[6]  François Michaud,et al.  Relative positioning of mobile robots using ultrasounds , 2003, Proceedings 2003 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2003) (Cat. No.03CH37453).

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

[8]  Randal W. Beard,et al.  A control scheme for improving multi-vehicle formation maneuvers , 2001, Proceedings of the 2001 American Control Conference. (Cat. No.01CH37148).

[9]  François Michaud,et al.  Autonomous initialization of robot formations , 2004, IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, 2004. Proceedings. ICRA '04. 2004.

[10]  Maja J. Mataric,et al.  A general algorithm for robot formations using local sensing and minimal communication , 2002, IEEE Trans. Robotics Autom..

[11]  S. Shankar Sastry,et al.  Formation control of nonholonomic mobile robots with omnidirectional visual servoing and motion segmentation , 2003, 2003 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (Cat. No.03CH37422).

[12]  Dongbing Gu,et al.  A Fuzzy Leader-Follower Approach to Formation Control of Multiple Mobile Robots , 2006, 2006 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems.

[13]  F. Y. Hadaegh,et al.  A model predictive control-based approach for spacecraft formation keeping and attitude control , 1999, Proceedings of the 1999 American Control Conference (Cat. No. 99CH36251).

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

[15]  Kouhei Ohnishi,et al.  Autonomous decentralized control for formation of multiple mobile robots considering ability of robot , 2004, IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics.

[16]  Erfu Yang,et al.  A suboptimal model predictive formation control , 2005, 2005 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems.