Edge-Weighted Consensus-Based Formation Control with Collision Avoidance for Mobile Robots Based on Multi-Strategy Mutation Differential Evolution

An edge-weighted consensus-based formation control strategy is presented for mobile robots. In the edge-weighted strategy, a desired formation pattern is achieved by adjusting gain weights related to the distance between robots. Moreover, the edge-weighted formation control exploits the properties of weighted graphs to allow the formation to rotate and adapt its shape to avoid collision among robots. However, formation patterns are commonly defined by biases with respect to the centroid of the consensus rather than gain weights. This work proposes to optimize the gain weights in edge-weighted graphs, given a formation pattern in terms of biases. A multi-strategy mutation differential evolution algorithm is introduced to solve the optimization problem. Simulation and real-world experiments are performed considering multi-robot systems composed of differential drive robots. Additionally, the experimental setup includes Turtlebot3 & REG; Waffle Pi robots and an OptiTrack & REG; motion capture system for control purposes. The experimental results verify the effectiveness of the proposed approach.