Dynamic region following formation control for a swarm of robots

Abstract

This paper presents a dynamic region following formation control method for a swarm of robots. In this control strategy, a swarm of robots shall move together as a group inside a dynamic region that can rotate or scale to enable the robots to adjust the formation. Various desired shapes can be formed by choosing appropriate functions. Unlike existing formation control methods, the proposed method do not need to have specific identities or orders in the group but yet dynamic formation can be formed for a large group of robots. This enables a swarm of robots to adjust the formation during the course of maneuver. The system is also scalable in the sense that any robot can move into the formation or leave the formation without affecting the other robots. Lyapunov-like function is presented for convergence analysis of the multi-robot systems. Simulation results are presented to illustrate the performance of the proposed controller.