One of the most challenging goals in multi-robot systems is the cooperative control of swarms of robots to establish a complex formation. The large size of the community and the complexity of the task are the main obstructions that hinder the attainment of the goal. In this paper, we overcome these difficulties by introducing a multi-group coordination control methodology for robot swarms. Decomposition of robot swarms to multiple groups increases versatility of the whole community in operating in intricate environment. We formulate the problem into two parts: inter-group formation and intra-group formation. In the inter-group formation, coordination of groups in the community is considered, and in the intra-group formation, the formation of individuals in the groups is studied. Moreover, the concept of adaptive interactive force is proposed to cope with the inter-group interactions. Theoretical analysis of the stability of the multi-group control system is presented. Simulation results are presented to illustrate the performance of the proposed method.

R. Haghighi received a B.S. degree in manufacturing and product engineering from Amirkabir University of Technology (Tehran Polytechnic) in 2006, and an M.S. degree in mechatronics engineering from Iran University of Science and Technology in 2008. He is currently pursuing his Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, under the supervision of Professor Chien Chern Cheah. His research interests include the formation control of multi-robot systems, cooperative control, network-controlled systems, and consensus problems in the synchronization of complex networks.

C.C. Cheah was born in Singapore. He received a B.E. degree in electrical engineering from the National University of Singapore in 1990, and M.E. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering, both from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, in 1993 and 1996, respectively.

From 1990 to 1991, he worked as a design engineer in Chartered Electronics Industries, Singapore. He was a research fellow in the Department of Robotics, Ritsumeikan University, Japan, from 1996 to 1998. He joined the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, as an assistant professor in 1998. Since 2003, he has been an associate professor in Nanyang Technological University. In November 2002, he received the overseas attachment fellowship from the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), Singapore, for visiting the Nonlinear Systems Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

He serves as an associate editor for IEEE Transactions on Robotics, Automatica and Asian Journal of Control. He serves as a member of the Conference Editorial Board of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society and the program chair of the International Conference on Control, Automation, Robotics and Vision (ICARCV) 2012. He was the program chair of the International Conference on Control, Automation, Robotics and Vision (ICARCV) 2006 and the program co-chair of IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Biomimetics (ROBIO) 2009. He served as a member of the Best Conference Paper Award Committee of IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2011, a member the Best Manipulation Paper Award Committee of IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2009, and the Best Paper Award Chair of IEEE Conference on Robotics, Automation and Mechatronics 2008.