Research On Formation And Flocking Control Of Multiple Robots

Motion planning of multiple robots is becoming a hot topic in robot field in recent years. Motion planning of multiple robots includes obstacle avoidance (collision avoidance), flocking and formation control. Flocking control makes the group of robots have the characteristics of separation, alignment and cohesion. Formation control makes a robot team maintain a desired formation and provide redundancy and structural flexibility. The formation and flocking control based on graph theory and artificial potential field method (APF) is further researched in this thesis.This thesis firstly made a summary of the motion planning (included obstacle avoidance, flocking and formation control) in domestic and foreign academic filed, and focused on formation control issues of multiple robots.Secondly, the outline and application of graph theory are summarized. The formation control based on graph theory and APF is detailedly introduced. The flocking control based on graph theory and APF is improve to make the multiple robots reach a desired formation, at the same time the stability of the improved method has been proved.Thirdly, through the analysis of the method of reducing the communications, an improved formation and flocking control law based on graph theory and APF is presented to reduce the communications among multiple robots, and make the multiple robots system adapt to the environment which has strict requests for traffic.At last, simulations are presented about some conclusions and control laws in literature, and the results are analyzed. The results of simulations demonstrate the feasibility and validity of formation and flocking control law (based on graph theory and APF) and the control law of reducing communications.