Decentralized formation control of multiple robots

Abstract

The main objective of the project is to develop an interface to simulate the formation control of multiple mobile robots from any initial condition. Based on the information obtained within the sensing neighbourhood of robots, collision between robots and stationary point-obstacles are also to be avoided. Furthermore, this group of robots is also able to maintain the particular form and avoid the collisions with obstacles during moving along a trajectory. A graphical display (GUIDE in MATLAB) should also be designed to illustrate the control effect. This project is divided into few parts. The first part is to investigate a formation of static regular polygon base on paper [1]. Then, basing on the previous results and by using a bijective coordinates transformation, the formation of static arbitrary shape is obtained. After obtained the results of formation of static shape, the strategy is modified by us so that the robots are able to move along a trajectory during the formation. Lastly, obstacles are added on the trajectory to deform the shape and observe their performance. All the formations are based on the interaction of some artificial potential fields. To have a convenient working environment to undergo simulations, a graphical user interface is developed. This interface is mainly used to tune different parameters, import files which contain shape, trajectory and obstacles, and save results graphs. By using this GUI, users can simulate and study for different kinds of analysis on this control method, such as sensitivity, optimization, computation delay and so on.