Abstract: Traditional multi-mobile robot formation control algorithms, such as artificial potential field method, virtual structure method, leader-follower method and behavior-based method, have good effects in a specific part of formation control, and have not effectively solve a series of complete movement of formation, marching, transformation and obstacle avoidance. For the advantages and disadvantages of the algorithms mentioned above, the switching system is applied, and a distributed multi-robot formation control algorithm based on state switching is proposed. A state-switching trigger mechanism based on complex information is designed. The switching mechanism is triggered by the robot's own state and the surrounding environment, and one or more algorithms of formation control are reasonably selected. A formation feedback mechanism based on ultra-wideband (UWB) rangefinding is proposed, which makes use of the simple data structure of UWB to facilitate the processing of the micro-mobile robot, and completes the keeping and feedback of formation in real time. A distributed state estimation algorithm is proposed to provide the running state of robot for the trigger mechanism. The proposed strategy is applied to the actual robot formation control by constructing a multi-mobile robot platform, and the effectiveness and stability of the algorithm are verified. Key

Key words: multi-robot, formationcontrol, statusswitching, distributedstateestimation, ultra-wideband