Flocking by a Set of Autonomous Mobile Robots

Gervasi, Vincenzo and Prencipe, Giuseppe (2001) Flocking by a Set of Autonomous Mobile Robots. Technical Report del Dipartimento di Informatica . Università di Pisa, Pisa, IT.

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Abstract

Control and coordination of a set of autonomous vehicles that can freely move on a plane is a widely studied topic in robotics. The focus on this kind of problem has grown in recent years because of the increased interest in studying systems populated by many, simple units, instead of few, powerful ones. In particular, these units simply observe the environment by using their sensors, and react following simple rules: the reaction to the environmental stimuli is called the {\em behavior} of the unit. In this paper we study the {\em flocking problem}: a set of mobile units are required to follow a leader unit while keeping a predetermined formation (i.e., they are required to move in flock, like a group of soldiers). Moreover, the units in the flock do not know beforehand the path the leader will take: their task is just to follow him wherever he goes, and to keep the formation while moving.

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