Dynamic Reconfiguration of Robotic Swarms: Coordination and Control for Precise Shape Formation

Abstract: Coordination of movement and configuration in robotic swarms is a challenging endeavor. Deciding when and where each individual robot must move is a computationally complex problem. The challenge is further exacerbated by difficulties inherent to physical systems, such as measurement error and control dynamics. Thus, how to best determine the optimal path for each robot, when moving from one configuration to another, and how to best perform such determination and effect corresponding motion remains an open problem. In this paper, we show an algorithm for such coordination of robotic swarms. Our methods allow seamless transition from one configuration to another, leveraging geometric formulations that are mapped to the physical domain through appropriate control, localization, and mapping techniques. This paves the way for novel applications of robotic swarms by enabling more sophisticated distributed behaviors.