Semi-centralized control for multi-robot formation and theoretical lower bound

Abstract

Multi-robot formation control enables robots to cooperate as a working group in completing complex tasks, which has been widely used in both civilian and military scenarios. Before moving to reach a given formation, each robot should choose a position from the formation so that the whole system cost is minimized. To solve the problem, we formulate an optimization problem in terms of the total moving distance and give a solution by the Hungarian method. To analyze the deviation of the achieved formation from the ideal one, we obtain the lower bound of formation bias with respect to system's parameters based on notions in information theory. As an extension, we discuss methods of transformation between different formations. Some theoretical results are obtained to give a guidance of the system design.