Path planning method for leader-follower multi-vehicle formation with integrating GoT-SAC

A leader-follower formation path planning method was proposed through integrating the Goal-oriented Transformer (GoT) and the Soft Actor-Critic (SAC) on the Mecanum Wheeled intelligent platform, named GoT-SAC, to enhance the stability and efficiency of formation operation in unknown environments. Experimental validation was conducted in both the Gazebo environment and on a miniature physical platform. The results show that the GoT-SAC model converges within 95–100 training episodes. The average relative pose error reduces from 18 cm to 6 cm with a path-length relative-difference being below 5% compared with the manual remote-control strategy. Therefore, the proposed method achieves stable formation and efficient obstacle avoidance without relying on prior map information.