Robot formations: robots allocation and leader-follower pairs

Abstract

In this paper we focus on the problem of assigning robots to places in a desired formation, considering random initial locations of the robots. Since we use a leader-follower strategy, we also address the task of choosing the leader to each follower. The result is a formation matrix that describes the relation between the robots and the desired formation shape. Simple algorithms are defined, that are based on the minimization of the distances of robots to places in the formation. All these algorithms are implemented in a decentralized way. We assume that communication is possible, but the requirements are of very-low bandwidth.