Formation Reconfiguration Control With Collision Avoidance of Nonholonomic Mobile Robots

This letter proposes a global optimization-based formation reconfiguration control method for multiple nonholonomic mobile robots. To reconfigure their formation, multiple mobile robots need to move from their initial poses to specific relative poses. However, during the formation reconfiguration process, there is a high risk of collision between robots. Moreover, each robot might fall into a local optimum and fail to converge to the desired formation. To address these problems, we propose a global optimization-based model predictive formation control method that can guarantee collision avoidance. The proposed global optimization-based formation control method effectively avoids local optima, and finds solutions close to the global optimal solution in real-time, ensuring that the desired formation is achieved. To verify the performance of the proposed method, we built hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) simulation using physics simulation and multiple embedded computers to establish an experimental environment that is closely similar to that of real physical multiple mobile robots. Furthermore, we conduct experimental verification using actual physical multiple mobile robots. The proposed method demonstrates the effectiveness of formation reconfiguration for nonholonomic mobile robots.