Stability Analysis of Circle Formation Generated by Multi-Robots with Local Vision.

Abstract

This paper deals with a kinematic stability analysis of circle formation that emerges through interaction caused by local vision and obstacle-avoidance action in multi-robots. Individual robot has a specific, limited range of signal communication to detect other robots and, according to the location of other robots detected around each robot, the robot takes an action such as proceeding forward or turning left/right at particular angle for each time step. This action selection algorithm is implemented into each of robots. By changing the turning angle and vision angles, computer simulation of group behavior in the multi-robots is carried out and we find rather stable circle formation emerged in such robotic system. In order to analyze the kinematic stability of the circle formation, we propose a circle formation model that represents the ideal circle to be generated by multi-robots, and examine theoretically the stability of the circle formation in terms of the vision angles, the turning angle, and robot number forming a circle. The theoretical results are also examined by computer simulations and a good agreement is shown between the both results.