Relative State Formation-based Warehouse Multi-robot Collaborative Parcel Moving

We present an approach for collaborative parcel moving in warehouses with a multi-robot system. First, given a rectangular box of goods, a novel problem is formulated based on relative state formation theory, where a network of ground vehicles is utilized to firmly clamp and transport the box. Then, by constructing a virtual formation leader at the centre of the box, its path is derived such that the formation trajectory is fully independent of the group size. In this sense, the path planning for all robots in advance is entirely avoided, which greatly facilitates the proposed approach more user-friendly and time effective. Moreover, a control strategy is presented for robots with the convergence of the tracking errors being ensured. Finally, our results include experiments on a real robotic testbed.