A distributed multi-robot formation control method

Formation control of multiple wheeled robots with nonholonomic constraints and limited acceleration has been studied in this paper. A distributed formation control method taking acceleration into account in Leader-following structure is proposed. The method uses only local sensing information and the velocity information obtained by communication. Little communication through wireless network allows robots to share their velocity information. We also developed an artificial identity mark for large scale multi-robot systems. The identity mark can not only distinguish different robots, but also measure the distance and orientation between the robots. Extensive experiments have been carried out to validate our strategy both in simulation and with real robots.