Research On Formation Control And Connectivity Maintenance Of Multi-robot

As developing of computer technology and wireless communication technology, it ispossible for multi-robot systems to complete the task through the coordination andcooperation which is difficult for single robot. The multi-robot system has many advantageswhich is difficult to have for single robot, such as rich environment perception, highefficiency and excellent robustness. Multi-robot formation control has become one of theimportant research contents of the multi-robot cooperation field.This dissertation mainly focuses on forming and maintaining formation shapes of robotswarm systems on the foundation of the summary for the related research result, and proposesproper algorithms. The main work and contributions are as follows:(1) Some necessary preliminaries, some related models for the systems and somealgorithms are introduced, respectively. The preliminaries are some about graph theory whichcan include the adjacency matrix and Laplacian matrix. Second-order multi-robot systems andvirtual leader model are described, respectively. The algorithms are flocking control algorithmand Community division algorithm. The above section is ready for the study on formationcontrol of multi-robot systems.(2) Aiming at the swarm control problem which the large-scale robots are difficult informing and maintaining desired formation shapes, and communicating between robots, aformation control algorithm based on multilevel topology is proposed. Firstly, a multileveltopology method is employed to design the formation shape of robot swarm in the desiredregion. Moreover, a controller based on multilevel topology is presented to accomplishformation and obstacle avoidance. A shape regulation control force in the controller is used tosolve the local minima problem that causes the robots to get stuck at undesired positions, andachieves the maintenance of the formation shape of robot swarm. An orientation control forceis employed to ensure the stability of the formation structure direction. Finally, theexperimental results show the validity of the algorithm.(3) To overcome the problem which robot swarms are difficult in achieving andmaintaining stable formations, a formation control algorithm of robot swarms based oncommunity and multilevel topology is presented by referencing the ideas of communitydivision and pining control. Firstly, based on the hierarchical clustering algorithm, the scale ofthe robot group is divided into several communities and a fixed pining robot is selected ineach community. Secondly, a multilevel topology structure is designed as the standardformation shape of robots in each community. Finally, a controller is proposed to finishformation and obstacle avoiding. The local minimum problem and the instability of the formation structure direction in system are solved simultaneously. Simulation result verifiesthe validity of this algorithm.