Distributed formation control with limited sensing ranges and scalability

This paper is concerned with the formation control and stability analysis for a team of robots when the size is variable, the individual sensing range is limited and no data communication is assumed among the robots. The concept of triangle displacement based formation is established to make the formation scalable. In the control strategy, the predefined formation is first partially reached but it is subject to potential collisions. Then, a protocol is proposed to eliminate all collisions while maintaining connectivity. Subsequently, a novel controller is designed and a coordination protocol is developed. Analysis is made on simulation examples to demonstrate the performance and merits of the proposed techniques.