Swarm Robotics Pattern Formation Algorithms

Abstract

Pattern formation is an important challenge in autonomous swarm robotics, it can drastically increase the efficiency of a group of robots and can be used in applications such as exploration and area coverage. Many pattern formation algorithms have been suggested with different constraints and assumptions of the robot's capabilities typically leaning towards robots with limited sensors meanwhile the proposed work relies on the current advancements in autonomous robots algorithms using robots with a wide range of sensors to tackle the pattern formation problem.We will present four main algorithms to solve the pattern formation problem mainly: peer detection, leader selection, pattern formation, and narrow path detection.These algorithms will be explained in this paper and are tested using ROS/Gazebo under different scenarios.