A behavioral control approach to formation-keeping through an obstacle field

This work addresses the problem of guiding a number of ground vehicles from some initial location to a specified destination, while avoiding obstacles in an unmapped field and maintaining formation relative to each other. Potential applications for recently developed ground formation are described in this paper, illustrating the need for autonomy in such formation systems. The behavior-base technique has been implemented to reach this autonomy in differential drive kinematics systems. The basic behaviors: move-to-goal, avoid-obstacle, maintain-relative-distance, maintain-relative-angle, and stop have been assigned to the independent systems to form a guidance algorithm. Validation of this guidance algorithm is carried out through simulations via Matlab/Simulink.