Formation Coordination for the Propagation of a Group of Mobile Agents via Self-Mobile Localization

In this paper, we provide formation coordination algorithms for a group of mobile agents via novel self-mobile localization. The main goal of the algorithms is to propagate a group of agents along a given reference trajectory without any global measurements from the initially known positions of the agents. The key idea of formation coordination is to calculate the position of a mobile agent using more than three agents fixed for a while during its movement; that is, the fixed agents act as reference nodes, whereas a moving agent is to be localized based on its own equipment for measuring the current position on the global reference frame. In this task, one of the main challenges is to evaluate the positions of mobile agents so that the desired formation could be achieved on the basis of the calculated position information. Based on the calculated position from locally connected reference agents, the mobile agents follow the given reference trajectory with respect to the global frame. After completing the movement of the mobile agent, the mobile agent is fixed, and then, it is used as one of the reference nodes, whereas one of the fixed agents is selected and switched to the next mobile agent. By repeating this process, all the agents sequentially move along the reference trajectory. The main idea of the formation coordination established in this paper is verified by experimental tests.