Formation control of heterogeneous robots using distance and orientation

This paper proposes a planar formation control scheme for a group of mobile robots modeled as single or double integrators. The approach is based on the design of distance-based potential functions with inter-robot collision avoidance using the information about the distance with respect to other robots in polar coordinates. The result applies to an arbitrary undirected communication topology. The formation scheme becomes a decentralized control setup in robots equipped with local sensors of distance and orientation. The control approach can be extended to the case of kinematic and dynamical models of nonholonomic robots applying an appropriated input-output linearization. It enables the possibility to combine heterogeneous robots as shown by numerical simulations using the projection in the 2D plane of multi-rotor Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV's), unicycle-type and omnidirectional wheeled mobile robots. Also, an experiment with these real wheeled mobile robots is presented.