Planning and control strategies of multiple mobile robot moving in column formation

The main objective of this paper is to study the control problem for a multiple mobile robot team moving in the outdoor environment. In studying multi-robots how to make their formation from random original state into one line shape pass column shape area, we used a combination of centralized and distributed mechanism. First system designs path planning for every robot and formation control planning off-line based on centralized strategy. When robot will arise collision in moving, every robot plans its motion character respectively and design collision-avoidance control strategy using priority strategy based on distributed approach. After time period T, the system will get to a steady formation station. Then the robots move to the goal remaining the steady station. This method makes the system architecture concise, reduces moving blindness and increases system commonness. The method will insure robot team moving safely. At last, the emulation result is given and analyzed.