Decentralized Formation Control for a Team of Anonymous Mobile Robots

We present a coordination framework for mobile robot teams performing a task through cooperation. In cooperative robotics applications, robot teams are basically required to generate and maintain a geometric pattern, and adapt to their environment. Moreover, keeping the team formation, they continue to strive toward achieving their mission even if a part of team is unable to work and function normally. Toward this end, a unified coordination strategy is proposed under the condition that robot teams are not allowed to have a direct inter-team communication, a pre-determined leader, and individual identification numbers. In this study, only by observing the other members, a robot team is enabled to reach the goal and keep its formation. In practice, image processing techniques are employed to estimate the center coordinates of the members with respect to each other. We discuss in detail the features of the proposed algorithm that includes selforganization, robustness, and flexibility. Experimental studies with four real robots demonstrate the validities of the proposed algorithm.