Research On Multi-robot Formation Based On Artificial Coordinating Field

Formation control is a typical multi-robot cooperation. In recent years, with the widespread application of mobile robots system in military, industry and aerospace, the research of Formation control of mobile robots has made great strides forward. Compared with many other formation methods, Artificial Potential Field has been widely used in robot's real-time obstacle avoiding because of its algorithmic simplicity and high safety, however, there exist some problems such as shaking, local minimum, and failure in avoiding obstacles with moving target. Therefore, this paper provides a formation method based on improving artificial coordinating field, which not only considers the target speed, but also adds a coordinative force in traditional repelling force field. It combines attractive force, repelling force, coordinative force with robot's motion state and motion requirement under local environment so that it improves the accuracy and robustness of mobile robots complicated situations.In addition, there are various formation control methods from start point to target point in fixed formation. However, it is seldom mentioned that the formation varies with time and the number of robots. Therefore, this paper focuses on dynamic formation control based on Artificial Coordination Field.Finally, simulation of formation control based on artificial coordinating field is implemented on the TeamBots platform. Simulation results indicate that the proposed. algorithm not only overcomes local minimum of the artificial potential field, but also implements dynamic formation. Therefore, it is proved effective.