Formation Control of Multi-robot Systems

In this paper, we consider formation control problem for multi-robot systems under an undirected communication network. All the robots will track a leader, while form a desired formation. The leader can be static or dynamic. A distributed formation controller with neighbors' input information is applied. For practical implementation, control input information from neighbors can only be received after some time delays. It is therefore shown that the distributed control protocol using time-delayed control input information from neighbors guarantees the formation of the multi-agent system for any nonnegative delay. We will implement the new protocol on the Amigo robots. The experimental results will demonstrate the effectiveness of the new protocol.