GEOMETRIC FORMATIONS FOR A TEAM OF MOBILE ROBOTS Odometric-based Maintenance Method for Heterogeneous Teams of Robots

One of the most important topics in multirobot formations is how to maintain the initial formations while the robots are moving or navigating 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. The robots must cooperate among them in order to get that all the robots, despite their sensory power, can maintain the formation while they are moving. To get that, the robots only have available the communication among them and their own odometry information. One of the robots, the conductor, is in charge to drive 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.