A leader-following formation control of multiple mobile robots with obstacle

Abstract

By combining the Polar Histogram obstacle avoidance method, a leader-follower coordination formation control algorithm is proposed to solve the formation control problem of multiple mobile robots. Based on the formation control in leader-follower structure, a virtual-follower robot is introduced, and the formation control problem can be regarded as the follower robots tracking the virtual-follower robot. With the sensor technology, the corresponding path for robot movement strategy is provided in a simple or complicated environment so as to achieve the purpose of real-time navigation. With two-wheel differential robot Qbot as the investigation object, semi-physical simulation platform is built for simulation experiments. The simulation results show that the method can effectively achieve the coordination formation and obstacle avoidance control of multi-robot system.