Sidman, JessicaBallesteros, LisaSt. John, AudreyDiwan, Haya2021-05-252021-05-252021-05-25http://hdl.handle.net/10166/6299In collective transport, a search and rescue multi­-robot formation must preserve its shape in order to safely carry an object from one location to another. In this thesis we focus on persistent acyclic leader­-follower formations in which robots adhere to local pairwise distance constraints in order to maintain the formation as a whole. We rely on combinatorial rigidity and persistence theory, where robots are modeled as vertices and distance constraints as edges. In order to identify the formations that perform best, we define a property called diameter using the concept of waves. We hypothesize that diameter impacts the performance of a moving formation. By generating persistent acyclic leader­-follower formations, we design a set of experiments both on simulation and on a multi-­robot hardware platform. The results and analysis support our hypothesis that smaller diameter is related to better performance.en-USMulti-robot formationsThesispublic