Name
Abstract | ||
|---|---|---|
The paper focuses on leader-follower formations of nonholonomic mobile robots. A formation control alternative to those existing in the literature is introduced. We show that the geometry of the formation imposes a bound on the maximum admissible curvature of leader trajectory. An peculiar feature of the proposed strategy is that the followers position is not rigidly fixed with respect to the leader reference frame but varies in suitable cones centered in the leader reference frame. Our approach also applies to hierarchical multirobot forma- tions described by rooted tree graphs. Simulation experiments confirm the effectiveness of the proposed control schemes. I. INTRODUCTION In the last few years formation control became one of the leading research areas in mobile robotics. By formation control we simply mean the problem of controlling the relative position and orientation of the robots in a group while allowing the group to move as a whole (2). The use of robot formations ranges from military to civilian applicat ions such as terrain and utilities inspection, disaster monitor ing, environmental surveillance, search and rescue and planetary exploration. Different robot formation typologies have been studied in the literature: ground vehicles (5), (7), (12), ( 13), unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) (3), (10), aircraft (8), (9), and surface and underwater autonomous vehicles (6), (14). Existing approaches to robot formation control generally fall into three categories: behavior based, virtual structure a nd leader following. In the behavior based approach (1), (11) several desired behaviors (e.g. collision avoidance, formation keeping, t arget seeking) are prescribed to each robot. Robot final action is derived by weighting the relative importance of each behavior. The theoretical formalization and mathematical analysis of this approach is difficult and consequently it is not easy to guarantee the convergence of the formation to a desired configuration. The virtual structure approach (15) considers the robot formation as a single virtual rigid structure so that the behavior of the robotic system is assimilable to that of a physical object. Desired trajectories are not assigned to each single robot but to the entire formation as a whole. In this case the behavior of the robot formation is predictab le and consequently the control of the robot formation is L. Consolini is with Dipartimento di Ingegneria dell'Infor mazione, |
Year | DOI | Venue |
|---|---|---|
2007 | 10.1109/ROBOT.2007.363678 | Roma |
Keywords | Field | DocType |
mobile robots,multi-robot systems,position control,trees (mathematics),formation geometry,hierarchical multirobot formation,leader trajectory,leader-follower formation control,maximum admissible curvature,nonholonomic mobile robots,rooted tree graph | Reference frame,Tree (graph theory),Curvature,Control theory,Leader follower,Control engineering,Nonholonomic mobile robot,Engineering,Mobile robot,Trajectory | Conference |
Volume | Issue | ISSN |
2007 | 1 | 1050-4729 E-ISBN : 1-4244-0602-1 |
ISBN | Citations | PageRank |
1-4244-0602-1 | 15 | 0.78 |
References | Authors | |
10 | 4 | |
Name | Order | Citations | PageRank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Luca Consolini | 1 | 276 | 31.16 |
| Fabio Morbidi | 2 | 260 | 19.28 |
| Domenico Prattichizzo | 3 | 2079 | 177.15 |
| Mario Tosques | 4 | 205 | 16.95 |