Formation control of mobile robot swarm in search operation

Abstract

The use of swarm mobile robots has emerged as a promising approach to enhance search efficiency in various applications. This thesis focuses on proposing an effective design and fabrication methodology for a swarm mobile robot system based on the Robot Operating System (ROS) framework. Additionally, a novel network architecture is presented to improve communication efficiency among the robots. The primary objective of this research is to investigate the formation control of swarm mobile robots and their superior ability in search operations. Through extensive experiments and quantitative analysis, the performance of the proposed formation control strategy is evaluated in terms of survey duration, vision coverage, and target object search time. The results indicate significant improvements in terms of their survey and search time when employing the proposed formation control algorithm. This thesis provides valuable insights into the strengths and limitations of swarm robot formation control, offering a foundation for optimizing search operations.