Multi-robot formation control using leader-follower for MANET

With the development of the multi-robot coordination, the working efficiency of the multi-robot system is improved, and the tasks can be finished better. Multi-robot coordination is one of the important issues for the research of mobile robot. The research of formation control of multi-robot will improve the efficiency of the coordination of multi-robot. So the problem of multi-robot formation is a typical problem of the system of robot team formation, and also communications play an important role in mobile robot systems able to address real world applications. Mobile ad-hoc networks are characterized by self-organization, rapid deployment and fault tolerance. A multi-robot formation supported by mobile ad-hoc networks is suitable to some special situations where the communication devices of mobile networks cannot be preinstalled. The technology of leader-follower method has been very mature and the effect is good, and could be fast respond. However one issue with the typical leader-follower strategy is the lack of inter-robot information feedback throughout the group. And at present, the research of formation control only based on communication in real-time is not high, and the effect is bad. As the reason mentioned above, in this paper, we combined the leader-follower method with ad-hoc network to solve the problem of real-time formation. Then the robots can be in their lines correctly and quickly and arrive at the goal position. Computerized simulation results show that the approach is feasible.