Distributed Planning for Rigid Robot Formations with Probabilistic Collision Avoidance

TL;DR

This paper introduces a distributed control method enabling robots to maintain rigid formations while probabilistically avoiding collisions, demonstrated through simulations and real-world experiments.

Contribution

It proposes a novel distributed approach that combines formation control with probabilistic collision avoidance using consensus and constraint satisfaction.

Findings

Successful formation maintenance in simulations and real-world tests

Collision probability kept below specified upper bounds

Effective coordination among robots in dynamic environments

Abstract

This paper presents a distributed method for robots moving in rigid formations while ensuring probabilistic collision avoidance between the robots. The formation is parametrised through the transformation of a base configuration. The robots map their desired velocities into a corresponding desired change in the formation parameters and apply a consensus step to reach agreement on the desired formation and a constraint satisfaction step to ensure collision avoidance within the formation. The constraint set is found such that the probability of collision remains below an upper bound. The method was demonstrated in a manual teleoperation scenario both in simulation and a real-world experiment.