Distributed motion coordination of multiple mobile robots

A new method for controlling a group of mobile robots is presented. The method is fully distributed in the sense that each robot plans its motion individually on the basis of a given goal of the group and the observed positions of other robots. The method is illustrated by showing how a large number of robots can form an approximation of a circle, a simple polygon, or a line segment in the plane. It is also shown how the robots can distribute themselves nearly uniformly within a circle or a convex polygon in the plane. A method of dividing the robots into two or more groups is presented. It turns out that in many cases most robots execute an identical simple algorithm. The performance of the method is demonstrated by simulation