IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ROBOTICS, VOL. 28, NO.

6, DECEMBER 2012 1335

Hierarchical Formation Control Based on a Vector
Field Method for Wheeled Mobile Robots
Ji-Wook Kwon and Dongkyoung Chwa
AbstractThis paper proposes a hierarchical formation con-
trol using a target tracking control law based on the vector eld
method such that a decentralized and exible formation control
can be achieved without additional motion planning. Previously,
many researchers have dealt with the control laws for the rigid for-
mation, where the line of sight toward the leader is controlled for
the leaderfollower formation control. However, a width change or
a collision of the formation can occur since a limited motion of the
rigid formation can occur when the formation control maintains
the line of sight. Therefore, the formation of multiple mobile robots
is required to be exible, keeping the width and curvature of the
formation. To this end, a formation control law based on a vector
eld method is proposed, and a hierarchical formation structure is
introduced in such a way that it consists of a line formation and a
column formation based on the leaderfollower formation strategy.
First, a subgroup, which consists of several robots, is generated us-
ing the line formation, and then, the overall formation structure is
constructed from several subgroups using the column formation.
Finally, we show the stability of the whole formation. The stabil-
ity analysis and simulation results of the proposed hierarchical
formation control using this vector eld method are included to
demonstrate the practical applicability of the proposed method.
Index TermsFlexible formation, hierarchical formation,
leaderfollower control, mobile robots, vector eld method.
I. INTRODUCTION
F
ORMATION control has been studied by many research
groups with various methods since they can achieve a task
better than a single-robot system. These works on formation
control show that several advantages, such as a reduced cost, ro-
bustness, improved performance, and efciency, can be achieved
by using a multiple-robot system [1]. The formation control
method can be efciently employed in various applications,
such as the manipulation of large objects [2], [3], an intelligent
highway system [4], [5], surveillance systems [6], ight forma-
tion systems [7], [8], and surface vehicle formation systems [9].
Since the formation control algorithm can improve the perfor-
mance and efciency of these systems, the formation control
Manuscript received June 30, 2011; revised December 9, 2011 and March
26, 2012; accepted June 24, 2012. Date of publication August 14, 2012; date
of current version December 3, 2012. This paper was recommended for publi-
cation by Associate Editor S. Carpin and Editor D. Fox upon evaluation of the
reviewers comments. This work was supported by the Basic Science Research
Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea funded by the
Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (2012006233).
J.-W. Kwon is with the Korea Institute of Industrial Technology, Ansan 426-
171, Korea.
D. Chwa is with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering,
Ajou University, Suwon 443-749, Korea (e-mail: dkchwa@ajou.ac.kr).
Color versions of one or more of the gures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identier 10.1109/TRO.2012.2206869
of multiple robots has been studied via various methods, such
as virtual structure methods [3], behavior-based methods [10],
and leaderfollower methods [1], [11][13]. The virtual struc-
ture method maintains a rigid geometric relationship between
the robots and a reference frame. The behavior-based method
denes the group behavior as a combination of the behavior
of each member. In the leaderfollower method, the followers
are controlled to follow the motion of the leader. The followers
usually maintain a line of sight toward the leader and the other
robots whether they use visual sensors or not [13]. Even when
they are in wireless communication environment, the member
robots keep the formation using the method based on the line
of sight. In addition, the width of the formation can increase
abruptly with a turn, because of the decreasing radius of the
follower trajectory. This change in the width of the formation
can result in collisions unless an additional motion planning
algorithm is employed. Therefore, the method keeping the line
of sight cannot provide a exible formation structure without
additional motion planning.
The formation can be classied as either a rigid or a exi-
ble one [14]. In many previous studies [1], [11][13], the rigid
formation was frequently used because the representation and
control of the formation becomes easier. However, a rigid forma-
tion can suffer from collisions or a limited mobility, especially
at corners or narrow passages when the formation size is bigger
than the corner or the passage [14]. In the case of the exible
formation control, however, the formation of the multiple robots
can be adjusted, depending on the size and shape of the corner,
road, or corridor in order to avoid collisions [14].
To achieve exible formation control, additional motion plan-
ning and path generation was used in [14] and [15]. Since all
the robots in the formation should know the reference trajectory
information of the other robots for additional motion planning
and path generation, this formation control algorithm requires
a wide bandwidth communication channel and fast processors,
and therefore, it becomes infeasible if the number of the mem-
bers of the formation increases to too great a value [1].
In this paper, we propose a novel hierarchical formation con-
trol law based on the vector eld method [18], [19]. In some of
previous research, each wheeled mobile robot (WMR) is con-
trolled for the whole formation. In addition, the hierarchical
formation control was studied in [16] and [17], which, how-
ever, handles the hierarchical formation structure where each
robot follows the other robot using tree structure without group-
ing and considering the exibility. In the previous results on
the hierarchical structure in [26], the role of each subgroup
and the robot in the hierarchy is unclear, and furthermore, the
exibility cannot be obtained. On the other hand, as smaller
1552-3098/$31.00 2012 IEEE
1336 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ROBOTICS, VOL. 28, NO. 6, DECEMBER 2012
Fig. 1. Hierarchical formation structure. (a) Line formation. (b) Column formation. (c) Hierarchical formation.
subgroups, which construct the whole formation, can be con-
sidered to be a single WMRin the proposed method, a basic for-
mation can be easily maintained, even if several WMRs are miss-
ing. In other words, when the hierarchical formation represented
by subgroups is achieved, we can expect that robust perfor-
mances, such as the expanded abilities of sensing and commu-
nication, can be achieved even if the whole formation cannot be
maintained.
Accordingly, we introduce the hierarchical structure which
can describe the role of each subgroup and robot more clearly
and also give the exibility of the formation using a line and
column formation for formation control. The member robots
construct the subgroups which can be represented as the line
formation, and the subgroups construct a group formation by
maintaining the column formation. This way, the polygonal for-
mation can be described by using a combination of column and
line formations. The hierarchical formation structure introduced
in this paper is depicted in Fig. 1. As shown in Fig. 1, in the
line formation, the robots are placed parallel to each other along
the same column, and in the column formation, the robots are
placed along the same line. The more general forms of polygo-
nal formation can be achieved by the appropriate combination
of the line and column formations, as will be shown later in
Section IV. Due to the hierarchical structure, we can obtain the
exible formation, as depicted in Fig. 1(c).
To maintain the line and column formations for the whole
polygonal formation, we control the robots based on the vec-
tor eld method. That is, we generate the desired position of
each robot with respect to the leader of the subgroup to main-
tain the line formation and determine the subgroup position
from the preceding subgroup information. This way, the fol-
lower subgroups can be positioned on the route of the leader
subgroup, and the mobile robots in the subgroups can maintain
the subgroup structure. Similarly, a potential-eld-based forma-
tion control algorithm was proposed, which could not achieve
the grouping and exibility [24], [25].
Accordingly, the contribution of this paper can be described as
follows. First, the exibility of formation can be achieved with-
out additional algorithms unlike the previous works. In virtue
of the exibility by the vector eld method, the member robots
can maintain a curvature even when the formation is in a turning
motion. As mentioned before, this cannot be seen in the results
using the rigid formation which keeps the line of sight [11][13].
The proposed formation control law and hierarchical structure
can maintain the width and exibility of formation, as can be
seen in Fig. 1(c), without the additional algorithm. Second, the
subgroups can follow the route of the leader group. It can pro-
vide the advantage that the followers can avoid the collision in
some particular cases when the robots move with a formation
where the width of the follower group is not larger than that
of the leader group (e.g., column formation) in stationary envi-
ronment, such that the member robots can avoid obstacles while
following the route of the leader if the leader group moves beside
the obstacles. Thus, the usage of the collision avoidance algo-
rithm can be reduced by employing the proposed control law
based on the vector eld method. Third, it can be said that the
proposed formation structure and control method is based on a
decentralized strategy, since the subgroups can be controlled by
using just the information obtained from the neighboring sub-
groups and also each robot in the subgroup can be controlled by
using the information from the neighboring robots. In addition,
the communication load of the member robots can be reduced
because those in the line formation just require the information
of the subgroup leader, and in turn, each subgroup leader of line
formations only needs to acquire the information of its preced-
ing subgroup to keep the column formation, unlike l and
unlike l and ll methods, where l is the distance between
robots, and is the desired relative angle which use information
of more than two robots [9]. The communication ow will be
described in Section IV.
This paper is organized as follows. The vector eld generation
using the route of the leader is described in Section II, and the
target tracking control using the vector eld method is explained
in Section III. In Section IV, the hierarchical formation control
method, which consists of the column and line formation control
algorithms, is proposed. To demonstrate the usefulness of the
proposed control algorithm, the simulation results are presented
in Section V. Finally, the conclusions of the study are given in
Section VI.
II. VECTOR FIELD GENERATION FOR THE TARGET TRACKING
The WMRs considered in this paper are underactuated sys-
tem with two actuations for three degrees of freedom and have a
KWON AND CHWA: HIERARCHICAL FORMATION CONTROL BASED ON A VECTOR FIELD METHOD FOR WHEELED MOBILE ROBOTS 1337
Fig. 2. Kinematics of the target and the actual robot with respect to COR.
nonholonomic constraint in Cartesian coordinates. The kine-
matic model of the robot is given by

x
i
y
i

cos
i
sin
i
0
0
0
1

_
v
i

i
_
(1)
where x
i
and y
i
are position variables,
i
is the orientation angle
of the mobile robot, and v
i
and
i
are the linear and rotational
velocities, respectively. Subscript i will be t, d, or c in the case
of the target, desired, or actual value, respectively.
Before designing the nonlinear controller used for the target
tracking based on the vector eld method for formation control,
the vector elds should be generated with respect to the route of
the target, as shown in Fig. 2. Although the vector eld was gen-
erated from the given path for the path following of unmanned
aerial vehicle (UAV) in [16], we use the vector eld for the tra-
jectory tracking problem of the mobile robot. Fig. 2 shows the
vector eld generated by the moving target. In Fig. 2, the circle
represents the route of the target, the center of rotation (COR) is
the center of the circle, and the arrows represent the direction of
the vector elds generated from the route of the target. It should
be noted here that a straight route can be represented as a part
of circle with an innite radius, the validity of which will be
demonstrated later in Scenario 1 in Section V. As can be seen
in Fig. 2, the mobile robot can track the circular route of the
target when the mobile robot moves along the direction of the
vector eld represented by the arrows. In Fig. 2, x, y, and were
dened previously, is the angular position with respect to the
COR, r is the radial distance from the COR, and the subscripts
t, d, or c replacing i mean the target, desired, or actual value of
the mobile robot, respectively.
The CORcan be calculated using the information of the target
position and the linear and angular velocities as
COR(x
Cr
, y
Cr
) =
_
x
t
+ r
t
cos {
t
+ sgn(v
t
)sgn(
t
)/2}
y
t
+ r
t
sin {
t
+ sgn(v
t
)sgn(
t
)/2}
_
(2)
where x
Cr
and y
Cr
are the position of the COR, v
t
and
t
are
the linear velocity and the angular velocity of the target, and
r
t
:= |v
t
/
t
| is the radius of the circular route of the target. For
clarity, the derivation of (2) is given in Appendix A.
Remark 1: In the case that
t
becomes zero,
t
can be
approximated to be a small value without loss of generality.
The validity of this will be shown in the simulation results for
Scenario 1 where the reference trajectory is chosen to include a
straight line.
Remark 2: The objective of the proposed hierarchical forma-
tion control is to make the formation be maintained using the
followers such that the formation can be generated by the leader
which has arbitrary trajectory because the leader is not inu-
enced by the formation control. The leader motion, however,
should be constrained to avoid the rapid turn. This constraint
is described as the limitation on the curvature of the circular
route of the leader. If the rapid turn occurs, the formation can-
not be maintained unless additional algorithms, such as shape
change and collision avoidance, are used. To focus on the for-
mation control, we assume the constraint of the curvature of the
formation route.
In [18], the vector eld using the relationship between the
trajectory and the mobile robot was generated as follows.
First, when the linear velocities of the trajectory and mo-
bile robot are nonnegative (i.e., v
t
0 and v
c
0), the desired
orientation angle
d
can be described as

d
(e
r
) =
c
+

2
sgn(
t
) + sgn(
t
)tan
1
(k
d
e
r
) (3)
where

c
= atan2
_
y
c
y
Cr
x
c
x
Cr
_
(4)
e
r
= r
c
r
t
(5)
for a constant k
d
> 0. Here, atan2() is a four-quadrant inverse
tangent with the values in the intervals of (, ]. Although only
the positive linear velocity of the robot is considered in [10],
because the robot is an UAV which cannot move in a backward
direction, both the positive and the negative linear velocities of
the mobile robot should be considered because the WMR can
move in both the forward and backward directions. Therefore,
the extended vector eld can be obtained as

d
(e
r
) =

c
+ sgn(
t
)
_

2
+ tan
1
(k
d
e
r
)
_
, v
t
0

c
+ sgn(
t
)
_

2
+ tan
1
(k
d
e
r
)
_
, v
t
< 0.
(6)
Here,
d
(e
r
) is set in two opposite directions to make the robot
be able to track the target moving in both forward and backward
direction [22]. The derivation of (6) is shown in Appendix B.
III. TARGET TRACKING CONTROLLER DESIGN
USING THE VECTOR FIELD METHOD
The target tracking controller is designed based on the ex-
tended vector eld in the previous section, which will be
used later to achieve the formation control. The kinematic
relationship between the target and the WMR is presented in
1338 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ROBOTICS, VOL. 28, NO. 6, DECEMBER 2012
Fig. 3. Relationship between the target and the actual mobile robot.
Fig. 3. In Fig. 3, l
c
is the distance between the target and the
actual mobile robot, q
t
is the angle between the orientation angle
of the target with respect to the straight line that passes through
the target and the actual mobile robot, and
d
is the desired
orientation angle obtained in (6).
Taking the time derivative of r
c
,
c
, and
d
, we have
r
c
= v
c
cos(
c

c
) (7)

c
=
v
c
r
c
sin(
c

c
) (8)

d
=
v
c
r
c
sin(
c

c
) + sgn(
t
)
k
d
v
c
cos(
c

c
)
1 + (k
d
e
r
)
2
. (9)
When the tracking errors are chosen as
e
l
= l
c
, e

=
c

d
, e
r
= r
c
r
t
(10)
the control objective is to make the convergence of the tracking
errors in (10) to zero. The time derivatives of e
l
and e

can be
obtained as
e
l
= v
t
cos(q
t
) v
c
cos(q
c
) (11)
e

=
c

v
c
r
c
sin(
c

c
) sgn(
t
)
k
d
v
c
cos(
c

c
)
1 + (k
d
e
r
)
2
. (12)
Then, we can design the control law for the target tracking as
v
c
= (q
c
)
1
cos(q
c
)
(v
t
cos(q
t
) + k
l
e
l
) (13)

c
=
v
c
r
c
sin(
c

c
) + sgn(
t
)
k
d
v
c
cos(
c

c
)
1 + (k
d
e
r
)
2
k

(14)
where k
l
and k

are positive constants, and

(q
c
) = 1 exp
_

_
|q
c
|

2
_
2
_

2
_
(15)
for a constant > 0. The radial function (q
c
) can make the
control input in (13) avoid very large value or innity when q
c
goes to /2 and, in particular, can make v
c
be dened always,
as will be shown later.
The designed control laws in (13) and (14) will be used for
both the line and column formation control. The stability of the
proposed hierarchical formation structure using the designed
control law in (13) and (14) is stated in the following theorem.
Theorem 1: Consider the relationship between the target and
the actual mobile robot in Fig. 3, and the control law given
by (13) and (14). Then, the error variables e
l
, e

, and e
r
are
uniformly bounded, and the ultimate bounds can be made to be
smaller with the choice of the smaller value of and the larger
values of k
l
.
Proof: To show that e

and e
l
are ultimately bounded and can
be made to be smaller with smaller and larger k
l
, we choose
the Lyapunov function candidate as
V =
1
2
_
e
2

+ e
2
l
_
. (16)
Then, the time derivative of (16) becomes

V = e

+ e
l
e
l
= e

c

v
c
r
c
sin(
c

c
) sgn(
t
)
k
d
v
c
cos(
c

c
)
1 + (k
d
e
r
)
2
_
+ e
l
(v
t
cos(q
t
) v
c
cos(q
c
)). (17)
Substituting (13) and (14) into (17) gives

V = k

e
2

(q
c
)k
l
e
2
l
+ e
l
v
t
cos(q
t
)(1 (q
c
)). (18)
Since 0 (q
c
) 1, v
t
is known, and v
t
cos(q
c
)(1 (q
c
))
is bounded, (18) becomes

V = k

e
2

(q
c
)k
l
e
2
l
+ e
l
v
t
cos(q
t
)(1 (q
c
))
k

e
2

(q
c
)k
l
e
2
l
+ |v
t
||e
l
| (19)
which shows that

V is negative outside the set {|e
l
| |v
t
|/
k
l
(q
c
)}, such that solutions starting in V c, where c >
(|v
t
|/k
l
(q
c
))/2, remain therein for all time [23]. In particular,
when is chosen to be very small such that (q
c
) becomes
almost 1 and k
l
is chosen to be large, the ultimate bounds of e

and e
l
become much smaller.
Next, we will show that e
r
converges to zero when e

and e
l
converge to zero. From Fig. 2, the law of cosine can be used
to give the relationship e
2
l
= r
2
c
+ r
2
t
2r
c
r
t
cos(
c

t
) =
(r
c
r
t
)
2
+ 2r
c
r
t
{1 cos(
c

t
)}=e
2
r
+2r
c
r
t
{1 cos(
c

t
)}. Since 2r
c
r
t
{1 cos(
c

t
)} is positive, |e
r
| |e
l
|
holds. In other words, as e
l
becomes sufciently small, e
r
will become smaller accordingly. Thus, the error variables e
r
,
e

, and e
l
to track the target are ultimately bounded and their
ultimate bounds can be made to be sufciently small with the
appropriate choice of and k
l
via the designed control law
based on the vector eld method. In particular, when e
l
= 0,
it follows that r
c
= r
t
(i.e., e
r
= 0) and
c
=
t
. In addition,
noting that

t
=

c
+ sgn(
t
)

2
, v
t
0

c
+ sgn(
t
)

2
, v
t
< 0
(20)
holds from Fig. 3, we can also see that e

= e
l
= 0 results in

c
=
t
. (Q.E.D.)
KWON AND CHWA: HIERARCHICAL FORMATION CONTROL BASED ON A VECTOR FIELD METHOD FOR WHEELED MOBILE ROBOTS 1339
Fig. 4. Communication ow between subgroups and robots (dotted arrow:
data transfer).
When is chosen to be sufciently small, v
c
in (13) is almost
the same as
v
c
=
1
cos (q
c
)
(v
t
cos (q
t
) + k
l
e
l
) (21)
when q
c
is away from /2. On the other hand, when q
c
con-
verges to /2, it can be easily analyzed that v
c
converges to
zero. Thus, v
c
can be dened to be zero for q
c
= /2. In this
case, it is required that the mobile robot has only the angular
velocity, while the robot has zero linear velocity, since the ori-
entation angle of the robot and the direction of the target are
orthogonal. Thus, the stability of the tracking control law in
Theorem 1 can be maintained using the control law in (13) and
(14), and the performances as well remains satisfactory, as will
be shown in Section V.
IV. HIERARCHICAL FORMATION STRUCTURE
In this section, we introduce the hierarchical formation struc-
ture to extend the capability of the systemand achieve formation
exibility. The whole formation consists of the line and column
formations, as shown in Fig. 1. Each member robot is part of the
line formation, and the generated subgroups in the form of the
line formation make up the column formation. The polygonal
formation can be represented as the appropriate combination of
the line and column formations. To build the proposed hierar-
chical structure, the subgroups and robots have the data transfer
mechanism, as described in Fig. 4. In Fig. 4, the information
of the preceding subgroup, such as position and orientation, is
transferred to the follower subgroup leader, and the information
of the subgroup leader is transferred to the follower robots in
the same subgroup as well. For example, the communication
strategy in Fig. 4 can be readily employed to the actual robot
using RF communication modules including Bluetooth and
Zigbee. This way, the performance of the formation control
for the multiple robots can be improved effectively. As in Fig. 4,
the robots are positioned on the polygonal formation. These po-
sitions can be described by the horizontal and vertical distances
with respect to leader subgroup and robot in the column and line
formation, respectively.
Fig. 5. Line formation structure.
To generate the column formation for each following sub-
group, the position of the following subgroup should be placed
along the route of the preceding subgroup, while keeping the
relative desired distance between them. In addition, each robot
in the same subgroup shares the information of its leader robot
to generate the line formation. The hierarchical formation con-
trol is achieved by the following procedure. First, a trajectory of
the whole formation is set to be the desired position of the leader
subgroup. Then, the leader of the leader subgroup transfers its
information to that of the following subgroup, based on which
the desired position of each member robot is generated. Finally,
they are controlled to track the desired position using the vector
eld method in Section III.
Here, it should be noted that the curvature of the leader robot
of the formation should be limited because excessively rapid turn
of the leader robot can break the formation shape, as described
in Remark 2. This assumption is reasonable, since we can see
that many systems have the curvature constraints even in the
case of the single robot such as car-like robot, ship, xed-wing
UAV, etc. The details of each line and column formation control
are described in the following sections.
A. Line Formation Control of the Mobile
Robots in a Subgroup
To maintain the line formation, the desired position of the fol-
lowers is generated with respect to the leader in the subgroup. If
the followers track their desired position, then the line formation
can be maintained as in Fig. 5. In Fig. 5, the desired positions of
the mobile robots are generated using the position of the leader
robot of the subgroup. The subgroup size can be adjusted by the
desired distances d
d
i1
and d
d
i+1
. Robot i is the leader robot, and
robot i 1 and robot i + 1 are the follower robots; they need to
be controlled to go to their desired positions.
To this end, the desired positions are generated using the kine-
matics of the two-wheeled mobile robots [19], and the desired
positions and linear and angular velocities are expressed using
1340 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ROBOTICS, VOL. 28, NO. 6, DECEMBER 2012
Fig. 6. Relationship between the leader subgroup and the follower subgroup
for the column formation.
the geometry between the robots in the subgroup as follows:
Robot i 1:

x
d
i1
y
d
i1

d
i1

x
i
y
i

d
d
i1
cos(
i
+ /2)
d
d
i1
sin(
i
+ /2)
0

_
v
d
i1

d
i1
_
=
_
1 d
d
i1
0 1
_ _
v
i

i
_
(22)
Robot i + 1:

x
d
i+1
y
d
i+1

d
i+1

x
i
y
i

d
d
i+1
cos (
i
/2)
d
d
i+1
sin (
i
/2)
0

_
v
d
i+1

d
i+1
_
=
_
1 d
d
i+1
0 1
_ _
v
i

i
_
(23)
where the subscripts i 1 and i + 1 mean left and right sides of
the leader robot (robot i), respectively. As can be seen in Fig. 5
and kinematic equations in (22) and (23), the followers are
positioned on the line which connects the COR and the leader,
and outer and inner followers should move faster and slower
than the leader, respectively, to maintain the line structure.
For robot i 1 and robot i + 1 to be able to track the desired
position to maintain the line formation, we use the tracking
control law that is designed in Section III. To use the control
law in (13) and (14), we employ the error variables e
r
, e

, and
e
l
, which are dened in (10). When each robot is controlled
well, the line formation can be maintained.
B. Column Formation Control of the Subgroups
in the Multiple Mobile Robot Systems
The position of the subgroups can be determined to be kept
along the route of the leader subgroup, as shown in Fig. 6.
In Fig. 6, x, y, were dened already in Section II, and the
subscripts l and f mean the leader subgroup and the follower
subgroup, respectively, l
d
is the desired distance between the
preceding and follower subgroups, and
d
is the desired angular
difference between neighboring subgroups derived from l
d
as

d
= l
d
/r
l
. From the relationship in Fig. 6, the position of the
Fig. 7. Route of the delta formation of the four robots.
follower subgroup can be set as
x
f
= x
c
+ r
l
cos (
f
) (24a)
y
f
= y
c
+ r
l
sin (
f
) (24b)

f
=
l
sgn (v
l
) sgn (
l
)
d
(24c)

f
=
l
sgn (v
l
) sgn (
l
)
d
. (24d)
In addition, the linear and angular velocities of the follower
subgroups are set to be the same as those of the leader subgroup,
since each subgroup keeps moving along the same route while
maintaining the desired distance from its preceding subgroup.
This way, the column formation can be constructed, and also
along with the line formation, the desired position of each robot
can be generated from its subgroup position.
V. SIMULATION RESULTS
In this section, the simulation results on the proposed hierar-
chical formation control include various situations. Four mobile
robots that have kinematic model in (1) and control laws in
(13), (14), and (24) are considered for the hierarchical forma-
tion structure in the two scenarios, each of which has delta
and rectangle shape, respectively, as in Figs. 7 and 8. In the
two scenarios, the initial positions of member robots are given
for rst robot: (2 m, 0 m, 0 rad), second robot (2 m, 2 m,
0 rad), third robot (2 m, 2 m, 0 rad), and fourth robot (2 m,
4 m, 0 rad). Instead of the signum function sgn () in (14), we
used the hyperbolic tangent function tanh() to avoid chattering
phenomena. In the results of the two scenarios, we can see that
the formation can move forward and backward in a exible way.
In Scenario 1, the member robots make the delta forma-
tion. The rst robot is the rst subgroup leader, the second
and the third robots are in the second subgroup of which leader
is the second robot, and the third subgroup has the fourth one
as the leader, as can be seen in Fig. 7. The desired distances
for the delta formation shape and the rst subgroups linear and
angular velocities are set as in Table I. In addition, a zero mean
randomnoise with the maximumvalue of 2%measurement units
KWON AND CHWA: HIERARCHICAL FORMATION CONTROL BASED ON A VECTOR FIELD METHOD FOR WHEELED MOBILE ROBOTS 1341
TABLE I
INFORMATION OF DELTA FORMATION IN SCENARIO 1
TABLE II
INFORMATION OF DELTA AND RECTANGLE FORMATION IN SCENARIO 2
Fig. 8. Formation shape change from delta to rectangle.
(meters and meters per second for position and velocity, respec-
tively) is included in the position and velocity information ac-
quired from the other robots like the simulation in [27] to show
the robustness of the control law without compensation of per-
turbations. The noise is included in the simulations to show that
the proposed control law and hierarchical structure can work
even in the presence of the uncertainties in the measurement
process in an actual environment. The tracking performance of
the proposed formation control method in Scenario 1 is pre-
sented in Figs. 7 and 9. Fig. 7 shows the routes of member
robots in the delta formation with conditions in Table I. The
member robots start to move backward and then move forward,
as presented in Table I and Fig. 7. In Fig. 7, we can see that
the simulation results include the straight line and circular route
with the forward and backward motion. When the velocities of
the leader subgroup are changed instantaneously, the errors con-
verge to zero after little transient motion. The errors of robots
are depicted in Fig. 9. In Fig. 9, it can be seen that the distance
and orientation errors of each robot converge to zero. It can be
noted that the error spike at every 10 s occurs because of the
sudden changes of the leader motion, as mentioned in Table I.
In Scenario 2, the member robots start to maintain the delta
formation as in Scenario 1, and then, the formation is changed
to rectangle formation at t = 6 s. The rst and second robots are
in the rst subgroup, and the third and fourth robots are in the
second subgroup. In addition, the 2% random noise is included
in the position and velocity information from the leaders. The
rst and third robots are subgroup leaders, and the robots initial
conditions and formation information are shown in Table II. The
performances of the proposed formation control method in this
case are depicted in Figs. 8 and 10. Fig. 8 shows the routes of all
robots in the formation with shape changed delta to rectangle
with the conditions in Table II. Especially, we can ensure that
the formation can show the exible motion and can be main-
tained in the sharp turn even if the formation shape is changed.
In addition, the change of the sign of the angular velocity of the
leader is included in the form of
g1
(t) = 0.15tanh(t 10).
Thus, we can make sure that the formation can be constructed
and maintained by the proposed hierarchical structure and con-
trol laws even when there is an immediate change of the sign of
the leader subgroups angular velocity. The errors of robots are
depicted in Fig. 10. In Fig. 10, it can be seen that the distance
and orientation errors of each robot converge to zero. When the
sign of the velocities of the leader subgroup are changed in-
stantaneously, the errors converged to zero after short transient
motion. In addition, the errors can converge to zero, even when
the formation shape is changed immediately.
It is noted that almost the same results for each scenario could
be obtained for many simulations, including the random noise,
and therefore, only one of these cases was presented in Figs. 9
and 10. From these results of the simulation, we can see that
1342 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ROBOTICS, VOL. 28, NO. 6, DECEMBER 2012
Fig. 9. Tracking performances of the robots in delta formation in Scenario 1. (a) Distance error of the rst robot. (b) Orientation error of the rst robot.
(c) Distance error of the second robot. (d) Orientation error of the second robot. (e) Distance error of the third robot. (f) Orientation error of the third robot.
(g) Distance error of the fourth robot. (h) Orientation error of the fourth robot.
the shape of the hierarchical formation structure can be main-
tained by the proposed control law. To show the performance
of the exibility and the maintenance of the formation width,
these results can be compared with the results presented in [20]
and [21]. In these results, compared with the rigid formation, the
width of the formation is changed in order to maintain the line
of sight, as mentioned in Section I. As shown in the previous
works, the followers move inside the route of the leader and pre-
ceding robots in the case of the formation control based on the
line-of-sight information; thus, the additional collision avoid-
ance algorithm can be required even though the formation has
been constructed well because of the movement of the followers
inside the route of the leader. On the other hand, the proposed
formation approach can achieve the exibility of the formation,
compared with the previous approach. The exibility achieved
by the proposed structure and control lawcan provide the advan-
tage that the followers can avoid the collision in some particular
cases when the robots move with a formation where the width
of the follower group is not larger than that of the leader group
(e.g., column formation) in stationary environment, such that the
member robots can avoid obstacles while following the route of
the leader if the leader group moves beside the obstacles.
VI. CONCLUSION
To control the formation with exibility, we have introduced
the decentralized hierarchical formation structure and proposed
the formation control law based on the extended vector eld
control method. This way, we could solve the problem of the
previous formation control law without exibility, where the
width of the formation can be changed due to the line of sight
toward the leader, and thus, the rigid formation cannot avoid
KWON AND CHWA: HIERARCHICAL FORMATION CONTROL BASED ON A VECTOR FIELD METHOD FOR WHEELED MOBILE ROBOTS 1343
Fig. 10. Tracking performances of the robots in rectangular formation in Scenario 2. (a) Distance error of the rst robot. (b) Orientation error of the rst robot.
(c) Distance error of the second robot. (d) Orientation error of the second robot. (e) Distance error of the third robot. (f) Orientation error of the third robot.
(g) Distance error of the fourth robot. (h) Orientation error of the fourth robot.
collisions, especially when the formation is turning a corner.
We constructed the hierarchical formation structure using the
line and column formation and designed the nonlinear control
law based on the vector eld. The proposed control law is one
of a decentralized strategy since each subgroup and the mem-
ber robot get the information from their preceding subgroup
and subgroup leader, respectively. To this end, the vector eld
method, which was previously valid only for a positive linear
velocity, is extended to the case where both the positive and
negative linear velocities of the robot should be taken into ac-
count. The simulation results showed that the proposed scheme
can achieve the desired exibility of the formation and main-
tain the width of the formation. In addition, we can see that the
proposed formation control law and hierarchical structure can
work well even when the formation shape is changed. In future
research, the issue for the robustness of the formation in various
environments with communication failure, as well as guaran-
teeing the string/mesh stability under the perturbation of the
leader and/or leader subgroup (e.g., position), will be pursued
with respect to the proposed hierarchical structure and control
law. For real robots, robust control mechanism compensating
for the uncertainties and disturbances of the formation structure
will be pursued, and these will be implemented to actual robot
system. In addition, the collision avoidance between WMRs in
the formation can be studied to consider the safety of the robot
in the formation.
APPENDIX A
DERIVATION OF (2)
In order to derive (2), we need to consider the sign of the
linear and angular velocities, which denes the position of the
COR with respect to the target. The relationship between the
target and COR can be described as the following four cases in
Fig. 11. In Fig. 11, the CORis positioned with respect to the sign
of the linear and angular velocities and the radius of the circular
route of the target. Because the target is on a circular route,
the COR is orthogonal to the direction of the target. Therefore,
1344 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ROBOTICS, VOL. 28, NO. 6, DECEMBER 2012
Fig. 11. Relationship between the target and COR. (a) v
t
> 0,
t
> 0.
(b) v
t
> 0,
t
< 0. (c) v
t
< 0,
t
> 0. (d) v
t
< 0,
t
< 0.
if the signs of linear and angular velocities are the same as in
Fig. 11(a) and (d), then the COR can be represented as
COR =
_
x
t
+ r
t
cos (
t
+ /2)
y
t
+ r
t
sin (
t
+ /2)
_
. (A1)
On the other hand, if the signs of linear and angular velocities
are different as in Fig. 11(b) and (c), the CORcan be represented
as
COR =
_
x
t
+ r
t
cos (
t
/2)
y
t
+ r
t
sin (
t
/2)
_
. (A2)
From(A1) and (A2), we can derive the position of CORusing
sgn(v
t
)sgn(
t
) as
COR =
_
x
t
+ r
t
cos (
t
+ sgn (v
t
) sgn (
t
) /2)
y
t
+ r
t
sin (
t
+ sgn (v
t
) sgn (
t
) /2)
_
.
APPENDIX B
DERIVATION OF (7)
To derive (7), the target and the actual mobile robot in Fig. 5
are considered. There are four cases depending on the sign of
the linear and angular velocities of the target, since the direction
and position of the circular route with respect to the target are
dened.
1) First, we consider the case of v
t
> 0 and
t
> 0. If r
c
is
signicantly larger than r
t
, then the desired orientation an-
gle becomes
d
(e
r
) =
c
+ . When r
c
equals r
t
, the de-
sired orientation angle is
c
(e
r
) =
c
+ /2. Therefore,
when v
t
> 0 and
t
> 0, the desired orientation angle can
be derived as

d
(e
r
) =
c
+

2
+ tan
1
(k
d
e
r
) (B1)
where k
d
is a positive constant that determines the rate of
transition from
c
+ to
c
+ /2.
2) When v
t
> 0 and
t
< 0, the desired orientation angle
is
d
(r
c
) =
c
if r
c
is signicantly larger than r
t
.
When r
c
= r
t
, the desired orientation angle is
d
(e
r
) =

c
/2. Thus, when v
t
> 0 and
t
< 0, the desired
orientation angle is

d
(e
r
) =
c


2
tan
1
(k
d
e
r
) . (B2)
3) When v
t
< 0 and
t
> 0, the desired orientation an-
gle is
d
(e
r
) =
c
+ if r
c
is signicantly larger than
r
t
. If r
c
= r
t
, then the desired orientation angle is

c
(e
r
) =
c
+ /2. Thus, when v
t
< 0 and
t
> 0, the
desired orientation angle is

d
(e
r
) =
c
+

2
+ tan
1
(k
d
e
r
) . (B3)
4) When v
t
< 0 and
t
< 0, the desired orientation angle is

d
(e
r
) =
c
if r
c
is signicantly larger than r
t
. When r
c
=
r
t
, the desired orientation angle is
d
(e
r
) =
c
/2.
Thus, when v
t
< 0 and
t
< 0, the desired orientation
angle is

d
(r
c
) =
c


2
tan
1
(k
d
e
r
) . (B4)
From the above four cases, we can derive the desired orien-
tation angle as

d
(e
r
) =

c
+ sgn (
t
)
_

2
+ tan
1
(k
d
e
r
)
_
, v
t
0

c
+ sgn (
t
)
_

2
+ tan
1
(k
d
e
r
)
_
, v
t
< 0.
(B5)
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Ji-Wook Kwon received the B.S. and M.S. degrees
in electrical and computer engineering from Ajou
University, Suwon, Korea, in 2005, 2007, and 2012,
respectively.
He was a Visiting Researcher with the Institute
of Science and Technology of Yvelines, University
of Versailles St-Quentin-en-Yvelines, Mante la Jolie,
France, in 2009. Since 2012, he has been with the
Korea Institute of Industrial Technology, Incheon,
Korea. His research interests include mobile robot
control and its applications, multiple robot coopera-
tion, and formation control.
Dongkyoung Chwa received the B.S. and M.S. de-
grees in control and instrumentation engineering and
the Ph.D. degree in electrical and computer engineer-
ing from Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea, in
1995, 1997, and 2001, respectively.
From 2001 to 2003, he was a Postdoctoral Re-
searcher with Seoul National University, where he
was also a BK21 Assistant Professor in 2004. Since
2005, he has been with the Department of Electrical
and Computer Engineering, Ajou University, Suwon,
Korea, where he is currently an Associate Professor.
He was a Visiting Scholar with the University of New South Wales at the Aus-
tralian Defence Force Academy and the University of Melbourne, Melbourne,
Vic., Australia, in 2003 and the University of Florida, Gainesville, in 2011. His
research interests include nonlinear, robust, and adaptive control theories and
their applications to robotics; underactuated systems, including wheeled mobile
robots; underactuated ships; cranes; and guidance and control of ight systems.