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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Xie, Qintong, Zhan, Weishu, Chin, Peter
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.04409
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author Xie, Qintong
Zhan, Weishu
Chin, Peter
author_facet Xie, Qintong
Zhan, Weishu
Chin, Peter
contents Multi-robot systems (MRS) are essential for large-scale applications such as disaster response, material transport, and warehouse logistics, yet ensuring robust, safety-aware formation control in cluttered and dynamic environments remains a major challenge. Existing model predictive control (MPC) approaches suffer from limitations in scalability and provable safety, while control barrier functions (CBFs), though principled for safety enforcement, are difficult to handcraft for large-scale nonlinear systems. This paper presents FORMULA, a safe distributed, learning-enhanced predictive control framework that integrates MPC with Control Lyapunov Functions (CLFs) for stability and neural network-based CBFs for decentralized safety, eliminating manual safety constraint design. This scheme maintains formation integrity during obstacle avoidance, resolves deadlocks in dense configurations, and reduces online computational load. Simulation results demonstrate that FORMULA enables scalable, safety-aware, formation-preserving navigation for multi-robot teams in complex environments.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2604_04409
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle FORMULA: FORmation MPC with neUral barrier Learning for safety Assurance
Xie, Qintong
Zhan, Weishu
Chin, Peter
Robotics
Multiagent Systems
Multi-robot systems (MRS) are essential for large-scale applications such as disaster response, material transport, and warehouse logistics, yet ensuring robust, safety-aware formation control in cluttered and dynamic environments remains a major challenge. Existing model predictive control (MPC) approaches suffer from limitations in scalability and provable safety, while control barrier functions (CBFs), though principled for safety enforcement, are difficult to handcraft for large-scale nonlinear systems. This paper presents FORMULA, a safe distributed, learning-enhanced predictive control framework that integrates MPC with Control Lyapunov Functions (CLFs) for stability and neural network-based CBFs for decentralized safety, eliminating manual safety constraint design. This scheme maintains formation integrity during obstacle avoidance, resolves deadlocks in dense configurations, and reduces online computational load. Simulation results demonstrate that FORMULA enables scalable, safety-aware, formation-preserving navigation for multi-robot teams in complex environments.
title FORMULA: FORmation MPC with neUral barrier Learning for safety Assurance
topic Robotics
Multiagent Systems
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.04409