Probabilistic formation - a new idea of multi-robot formation

Formation is an important problem of multi-robot domain, and it has been studied widely. However, most attentions are attracted on how to form and retain a rigid formation. In many practical situations, due to the tasks and environment are dynamic and uncertain, rigid formation may not obtain the best performance. In this paper, a flexible formation concept is proposed, which is described in a probabilistic formation form. The effect of the idea is studied in a CMOMMT problem. Simulation's results show that the flexible formation algorithm based on the proposed idea performs better than the rigid formation algorithms.