Readiness in formation control of multi-robot system

To analyze the performance of the formation system in response to inputs/disturbances from outside of the formation, we propose the notion of readiness, which describes the initial conditions of the formation in terms of a certain set of input space. A higher readiness means better initial conditions of the system with better performance in maintaining or recovering the original formation shape against the exogenous inputs/disturbances. Optimization method based on calculus of variations is used in the analysis for deriving the optimality conditions. Simulations modeled on both unicycle and car-like robots demonstrate the features and the potential applications of the proposed notion.