Decentralized Navigation for Heterogeneous Swarm Robots With Limited Field of View

Abstract

This letter proposes a navigation method for multirobots with heterogeneous abilities. In this method, a single leader navigates other robots that have different translational and rotational velocity and acceleration, sensing distance and angle while maintaining global connectivity. In particular, this method is decentralized in which the leader does not need real-time information on the whole swarm, and all followers use only locally available information to follow a target. Validity and effectiveness of the proposed method are demonstrated by theoretical analysis, and in a simulation and an experiment with real robots.