NON-HOLONOMIC ROBOT FORMATIONS WITH OBSTACLE COMPLIANT GEOMETRY

This paper presents a method of controlling a formation of holonomic or non-holonomic vehicles with a given geometry, compliant with nearby obstacles (including those represented by each robot's teammates). The vehicles are virtually linked to each other by the influence of artificial potentials that asymptotically stabilize the formation and keep all the robots separated by specified distances. A leader selected from the team, or a virtual reference point, is used to guide the team of autonomous vehicles throughout an area scattered with obstacles. Each vehicle has access to the positions of all its teammates, and senses the obstacles within a limited range of its neighborhood. All robots will try to maintain the specified distance to the leader by using attractive potentials, while avoiding collisions among themselves and obstacles, by using repulsive potentials. To avoid falling in local minima of the potential fields, the vehicles will recall the n latest positions of the leader and use this information to move around the obstacle and keep the formation.