Mobile robot replacement in multi-robot fault-tolerant formation

Abstract

Formation control in multi-robot systems (MRS) is essential for collaborative transport, environmental surveillance, material handling, and distributed monitoring. A major challenge in MRS is maintaining predefined formations or cooperative task execution when individual robots experience operational faults, potentially isolating them from the group. In mission-critical scenarios, preserving the number of operational robots is crucial for task success. To address this, we propose a Robot Replacement approach framework for differential wheeled mobile robots. This approach isolates faulty robots and dynamically replaces them with pre-deployed spares, ensuring uninterrupted formation tasks. A graph theory-based framework models inter-robot communication and formation topology, enabling decentralized coordination. The proposed techniques were implemented in a MATLAB/Simulink simulation environment. The simulated robots are equipped with LiDAR, an inertial measurement unit (IMU), and wheel encoders for navigation. Simulation results demonstrate that the framework successfully maintains the target formation and task continuity during robot failures by dynamically integrating replacements with minimal disruption.