Formation control of multiple mobile robots

Abstract

Forming a group of robots and works can be very useful in the modern society. It can help workers to finish numerous of tasks with a lower risk and high efficiency. For example, surveillance, search and rescue, mine scanning and unmapped area. In this project, we have successfully using few robots to form a particular shape without collision. There are many different approaches and methods to do the robot formation. The robots we used are equipped with a Wi-Fi module, 2 motors with rotary encoder and a UART board for Wi-Fi module. Before starting the formation, we have to connect the AP of the robots, in order to give commands to them. The robots do not know their position. Therefore, we have to give them an initial position and heading once the connection is set up. After connecting all of the robots, the formation is ready to start. The computer will pass a new coordinates to the robot. The robot will turn and move forward to the new coordinates. Since the computer has stored the current positions of all robots, the computer is able to ensure that they can move without any collision. After the robot receives the move command with the new coordinates, the robot will firstly turn the heading towards the coordinates and starts moving forward until it reaches the right position. After finishing a move, it will wait for next command. This procedure will repeat until the shape we want is formed.