A Virtual Spring Method for the Multi-robot Path Planning and Formation Control

Path planning is a challenging and critical issue in robotics, which involves computing a collision-free path between initial and target. The formation control ensures the robots' collaborative working. To address these two problems, an efficient virtual spring method for multi-robot path planning and formation control is proposed, and the interaction dynamic model is established to describe both logical and physical topology of the network. Based on the network model, the virtual spring method control law is designed, and aiming at the non-reachable and local minima problems, the virtual target search method is proposed. The robots can calculate an optimal path to the target in the predefined formation based on the control law and the virtual target search method. Finally, a series of simulation results confirm that the approaches proposed in this paper are feasible and efficient in the path planning and formation control for the multi-robot systems.