Formation and obstacle avoidance in the unknown environment of multi-robot system

Abstract

This paper presents formation and obstacle avoidance in the unknown environment of multi-robot system. With the leader-following algorithm, multi-robot system can form and keep various formations and realize formation transformation. Through artificial potential field algorithm, multi-robot system can successfully avoid obstacle in the unknown environment while keeping formation. The proposed method not only can realize obstacle avoidance of multi-robot system with formation in the unknown environment, but also can be adopted in real time and applicable to many different situations. By means of Pioneer3 mobile robot platform, the simulation and experimental works, which considering various formations and unknown environment, demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.