Abstract
We propose a formation-keeping and changing methods for outdoor multiple mobile robots in chained form. Our proposed method is designed to maintain the follower to its desired distance and orientation with respect to the pole using the concept of virtual force such as potential field. The client robots use a behavior-based control to perform kinematic control to keep formation under the centralized system in our software framework. The relationship of each poles that is expressed by set of distance and angle is the description of the formation type and the type converting is performed using this set. In addition, we also examine the stability and capability in the simulation and experiments with real robots.
