Visual-aided guidance for the maintenance of multirobot formations

Abstract

Among other multirobot formation topics, one of the most important is the maintenance of the initial formation while the robots are moving through the environment. This paper presents a new approach based on the cooperation among a team of heterogeneous robots for the maintenance of multirobot formations. In this case, one of the robots, the conductor, drives the formation and the rest of robots must follow it maintaining the formation. To do that, the use of "virtual points" and Bezier curves are introduced. Moreover, in order to solve the odometry problem of the robots, visual information is introduced, which allows one robot, the leader, to monitor the positions of the "blind" robots and help them to maintain the formation. In this way, a new method based on visual-aided guidance for the maintenance of formations have been developed. The results prove that this new approach is suitable for the maintenance of formations of multiple robots. © 2013 Springer-Verlag.