Collision Avoidance for Cooperative Formation Control of a Robot Group

Abstract

Abstract In order to fulfill any objective, a group of mobile robots has to ensure avoidance of collisions between each other at all times. This paper will present an integration of a collision avoidance scheme based on artificial force fields into cooperative formation control for ground robots which leads to implications for airborne robots. The focus will rest on the aspects required to use the control algorithms on an existing system of given mobile robots together with a measurement and communication system and give implications on the usability and stability of the formation control. The presented results show that the control algorithms can achieve formations while avoiding a collision for a group of mecanum wheeled robots in simulation as well as in an experiment. There are still divergences between the simulation and experimental data which lead to the conclusion that the simulation is not accurate considering used assumptions.