Single View Depth Estimation Based Formation Control of Robotic Swarms: Implementation Using Realistic Robot Simulator

Abstract

In earlier articles we had developed a formation control method based on single view depth estimation. In this paper, we implement that strategy on a robotic swarm composed of non-holonomic agents using the physics based Webots robot simulator. First, we review the single view depth estimation based scheme and the distributed control laws for the agents. Then, we discuss the related modifications due to the non-holonomic constraints of the agents and some related implementation issues and present some simulation results obtained using the proposed control scheme. The scheme is based completely on local information implying that neither global position information nor communication between robots are needed for the implementation of the algorithm. Copyright © 2008 by World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd.