Motion Generation for Groups of Robots: A Centralized Geometric Approach

Abstract

We develop a method for generating smooth trajectories for a set of mobile robots satisfying constraints on relative positions. We show that, given two end configurations of the set of robots, by tuning one parameter, the user can choose an interpolating trajectory from a continuum of curves varying from the trajectory corresponding to maintaining a rigid formation to trajectories that allow the formation to change and the robots to reconfigure while moving.