Aspects of formation control for swarm robots

Abstract

Despite the increasing capabilities and effectiveness of highly autonomous robots, there are still situations where one entity is not sufficient. Escorting and tracking are typical situations, where more robots can be more efficient. In this paper we will present a completely distributed algorithm for tracing moving objects in formation by using homogenous, medium scaled swarm robots based on local sensing and interactions. We have adopted and extended approaches from the already known concept of basis behaviors as ubiquitous general building blocks for synthesizing artificial group behavior, while adding communication capabilities to the system. We will present our experiments by introducing our virtual simulation environment.