Region following formation control for multi-robot systems

Abstract

In this paper, a region following formation control method for multi-robot systems is proposed. In this control method, the robots move as a group inside a desired region while maintaining a minimum distance among themselves. Various shapes of desired region can be formed by choosing the appropriate objective functions. The robots do not need to have specific identities since the proposed controller does not need specific orders of robots within the group. Therefore, the system is scalable since any robot can come in or go out of the group without affecting the system. Lyapunov-like function is presented for convergence analysis of the multi-robot systems. Simulation results are presented to illustrate the performance of the proposed controller.