Towards realizing a multiple vehicle coordination system

In this paper, a multi-robotic system consisting of three wheeled-vehicles is presented, designed and realized. The vehicles pinpoint their locations by utilizing magnetometer sensors and GPS modules, which form a star-type communication network based on Wi-Fi modules. An NEMA-like serial data transmission protocol is proposed to guarantee the robust information exchange, and the so-called concept of “destination determination ring” is introduced to deal with sensor noises. By applying a pose-based virtual-leader formation control algorithm to the system, the hardware and software design along with two test experiments are presented in this paper.