Location information driven formation control for swarm return-to-base application
Siwei Zhang, Ronald Raulefs, Armin Dammann · 2016
On Mars there is no global positioning system available. In this paper we present an analysis of a relative localization system that acts as a moving swarm to estimate the location of its base. Our algorithm jointly processes two objectives. First to shape an optimized swarm structure to estimate the location of the base reliable and second to move the swarm together towards the base to return home. The estimate of the base location is used to return to it by controlled movements considering constraints such as the minimum distance between the swarm elements to avoid collisions. The performance comparison of our location information driven algorithm with goal approaching or flocking algorithm shows a robust behavior with a much higher efficiency.