An analysis on flexible formations of nonholonomic mobile robots: Motion planning and control perspectives

Abstract

This paper presents an analysis on flexible formations of nonholonomic mobile robots from the perspectives of motion planning and control. The formations are flexible in the sense that their formation configurations are defined based on curvilinear longitudinal and lateral relative separations instead of the commonly used rectilinear relative separations. And the mobile robots' motions considered here are kinodynamically constrained. In this work, we relate the formation maneuverability with the mobile robots' limited motion capabilities and the formation's configuration which in turn provides a measure on the formation's motion capabilities. In addition, useful findings pertaining to fundamental formations are also derived, which are advantageous for efficient and effective formation motion planning and control. These results lay a foundation to address the problems of planning kinodynamically feasible formation leader's trajectories to connect flexible formations between different locations such that every robot of the formation can follow its assigned formation point without violating it's kinodynamical motion constraints.