A Virtual Structure Approach to Formation Control of Multi Robots with Collision Avoidance in Space Station

Abstract

We present an algorithm framework for formation control of multi robots with obstacle avoidance in the space station environment. First, the 2-dimensional complex environment is discretized using hierarchical rectangular partitions in the form of quad-trees; second, the formation in the space station is regarded as a virtual structure, and an optimal path is generated among the obstacle-free rectangles for the virtual structure by the A* algorithm; lastly, vector fields are derived not only for the virtual structure to track the optimal path, but also for each robot to maintain its required pose in the formation. Given the space station environment, the formation requirements and control constraints of the robot, the feedback control law of each robot can be generated independently. Simulations in MATLAB are developed to show the effectiveness and applicability of our method.