Cooperative Formation Control and Obstacle Avoidance of Multi-Robot Systems Based on Potential Field Method

Multi-robot systems (MRS) are widely used in military, industrial, and agricultural applications since they are capable of accomplishing tasks that individual robots cannot handle through collaborative cooperation. However, MRS often face challenges when considering formation characterization and obstacle avoidance simultaneously in real-world scenarios. In such context, a distributed cooperative formation and obstacle avoidance controller is proposed for wheeled mobile robots based on potential field method. In this paper, by using the leader-follower model, a consistency-based cooperative formation controller is designed, where the leader robot focuses on reaching the desired target point while the followers are responsible for maintaining the formation. Then, an obstacle avoidance controller based on potential field method is designed to avoid static and dynamic obstacles while preventing the formation from passing across the obstacles. Finally, the effectiveness and feasibility of the proposed cooperative method is verified through simulation tests and real experiments.