Formation Control of Wheeled Mobile Robots in Chained Form Using Potential Functions

Abstract

In recent years, using autonomous mobile robots in a multi agent and intelligent environment, designing the formation control is of particular importance. In this paper, after a preliminary introduction of chained systems and potential functions that have been applied in the design of the formation control. Using the goal and collision avoidance potential functions, the formation control of a group of systems whose equations of motion are in the form of chained systems is designed. Considering the conditions of the problem, the multiple agents whose dynamical systems are in the equation of a chained systems, has a limited control design in such a way that different agents are at the start of movement in different status and do not collide along the path of motion and ultimately reach the intended destination by using goal and collision avoidance potential functions. In the following, with the help of the proposed model, the control path is designed for a group of wheeled robots and its control and linear velocity and angular velocities are obtained. Then, simulation of eight wheeled mobile robots with chained dynamics, each of them at the initial are on a unit circle environment, is carried out to the desired goals where the octahedron is a regular octagon. The results obtained from the simulation that the robots reach their desired goals without collision with the other robots indicate the accuracy and efficiency of the suggested method in the design of the formation control for a group of robots in chained form, including wheeled mobile robots.