Abstract
Formation control is one of the most important issues of group coordination for multi-agent robots systems. Some schemes are based on the leader-followers approach where some robots are considered as group leaders which influence the group behaviour. In this work, we address a formation strategy using a virtual leader which has communication with the rest of the follower robots, considered as omnidirectional robots. The virtual leader approach presents advantages such as analysis simplification and fewer sensing requirements in the control law implementation. The formation control is based on attractive potential functions only. The control law guarantees the convergence to the desired formation but, in principle, does not avoid inter-agent collisions. A set of necessary and sufficient non-collision conditions based on the explicit solution of the closed-loop system is derived. The conditions allow concluding from the initial conditions whether or not the agents will collide. The results are extended to the case of unicycle-type robots.
Highlights
IntroductionMulti‐agent robots systems (MARS) are understood as groups of autonomous robots (called agents) coordinated to achieve cooperative tasks
Multi‐agent robots systems (MARS) are understood as groups of autonomous robots coordinated to achieve cooperative tasks
A formation control law based on the sum of APF and Repulsive Potential Functions (RPF) guarantees non‐collision, but does not ensure convergence to the desired formation for all initial conditions
Summary
Multi‐agent robots systems (MARS) are understood as groups of autonomous robots (called agents) coordinated to achieve cooperative tasks. A formation control law based on the sum of APF and RPF guarantees non‐collision, but does not ensure convergence to the desired formation for all initial conditions. This occurs because the robots can be trapped in undesired equilibrium points. Other attempts to achieve global convergence without collisions in formation control include: hybrid architectures where a high‐level supervisor switches momentarily to reactive non‐collision strategy [30], the use of small disturbances in order to escape from undesired equilibria which exhibit a saddle point behaviour [31] and the use of discontinuous repulsive vector fields [32].
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