Multi-agent based formation control using a simple representation

Abstract

Distributed multi-robot systems have been an active research field in recent years, and this paper focuses on the formation control. When vehicles keep a formation, such as platoons, it may increase throughput in automated highway systems. This paper presents a simple but powerful formation representation method, which can present arbitrary or regular infinite formation. This paper also proposes a kinematic control method of mobile robots and its proved convergence in maintaining formation. A architecture named Virtual Operator Multi-Agent System is used to assist formation control in joining robots into a team or in removing robots from a team. It is also useful in formation split and emergence.