Formation of General Position by Asynchronous Mobile Robots

TL;DR

This paper introduces a distributed algorithm enabling asynchronous, homogeneous mobile robots with obstructed visibility to achieve a general position without collisions, starting from arbitrary configurations.

Contribution

It presents the first algorithm for asynchronous robots with obstructed visibility to reach a general position in finite time, ensuring collision avoidance.

Findings

Robots reach a general position from any initial configuration.

The algorithm guarantees collision-free movement.

It operates under obstructed visibility and asynchronous conditions.

Abstract

The traditional distributed model of autonomous, homogeneous, mobile point robots usually assumes that the robots do not create any visual obstruction for the other robots, i.e., the robots are see through. In this paper, we consider a slightly more realistic model, by incorporating the notion of obstructed visibility (i.e., robots are not see through) for other robots. Under the new model of visibility, a robot may not have the full view of its surroundings. Many of the existing algorithms demand that each robot should have the complete knowledge of the positions of other robots. Since, vision is the only mean of their communication, it is required that the robots are in general position (i.e., no three robots are collinear). We consider asynchronous robots. They also do not have common chirality (or any agreement on a global coordinate system). In this paper, we present a distributed algorithm for obtaining a general position for the robots in finite time from any arbitrary configuration. The algorithm also assures collision free motion for each robot. This algorithm may also be used as a preprocessing module for many other subsequent tasks performed by the robots.