Distributed Formation Planning for Unmanned Ground Vehicles

The formation of multiple unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) has garnered significant interest due to its effectiveness in executing swarm cooperative missions. This paper introduces a distributed formation planning method for UGVs, comprising two key components. Firstly, a swarm-A∗ path searching algorithm is designed to generate discrete waypoints for UGVs. The proposed algorithm is able to enhance the cohesion of the swarm paths in obstacle-rich environments. Secondly, a formation trajectory optimization is constructed to generate smooth, executable formation trajectories that guide the formation in complex environments. Both simulations and real-world experiments validated the flexibility and adaptability of the proposed method.