Cooperative path following and collision avoidance of multiple robots

Purpose This study aims to design a path-following, formation-control and collision-avoidance paradigm to enable collective movements in confined space for multiple robots. We consider the system to be decentralized and robots to be cooperative. Design/methodology/approach This paper combines inter-robot and robot-boundary shortest distance, collision time and formation position in the switching of collision-avoidance, formation-control and path-following modes; utilizes collision time to update control output. This will reduce the conservativeness of the path following/collision avoidance/formation control algorithms and reduce operation time. Findings This work was supported by NSFC (Grant numbers 62203133). Originality/value In this paper, we utilize inter-robot shortest distance, collision time, robot-boundary shortest distance and formation position to enable control and collision avoidance for robots such that they can handle complex accessible space, irregular robot shape and complex robot dynamics. We consider that there is a finite set of control outputs and propose a mode-switching strategy for path-following and collision-avoidance modes. Such a scheme helps reduce the computation burden and improve the robustness of the proposed approach.