120 research outputs found
Distributed, adaptive deployment for nonholonomic mobile sensor networks : theory and experiments
In this work we show the Lyapunov stability and convergence of an adaptive and decentralized coverage control for a team of mobile sensors. This new approach assumes nonholonomic sensors rather than the usual holonomic sensors found in the literature. The kinematics of the unicycle model and a nonlinear control law in polar coordinates are used in order to prove the stability of the controller applied over a team of mobile sensors. This controller is adaptive, which means that the mobile sensors are able to estimate and map a density function in the sampling space without a previous knowledge of the environment. The controller is decentralized, which means that each mobile sensor has its own estimate and computes its own control input based on local information. In order to guarantee the estimate convergence, the mobile sensors implement a consensus protocol in continuous time assuming a fixed network topology and zero communication delays. The convergence and feasibility of the coverage control algorithm are verified through simulations in Matlab and Stage. The Matlab simulations consider only the kinematics of the mobile sensors and the Stage simulations consider the dynamics and the kinematics of the sensors. The Matlab simulations show successful results since the sensor network carries out the coverage task and distributes itself over the estimated density function. The adaptive law which is defined by a differential equation must be approximated by a difference equation to be implementable in Stage. The Stage simulations show positive results, however, the system is not able to achieve an accurate estimation of the density function. In spite of that, the sensors carry out the coverage task distributing themselves over the sampling space. Furthermore, some experiments are carried out using a team of four Pioneer 3-AT robots sensing a piecewise constant light distribution function. The experimental results are satisfactory since the robots carry out the coverage task. However, the accuracy of the estimation is affected by the approximation of the adaptation law by difference equations, the number of robots and sensor sensitivity. Based on the results of this research, the decentralized adaptive coverage control for nonholonomic vehicles has been analyzed from a theoretical approach and validated through simulation and experimentation with positive results. As a future work we will investigate: (i) new techniques to improve the implementation of the adaptive law in real time,(ii) the consideration of the dynamics of the mobile sensors, and (iii) the stability and convergence of the adaptive law for continuous-time variant density function
Lookup Table-Based Consensus Algorithm for Real-Time Longitudinal Motion Control of Connected and Automated Vehicles
Connected and automated vehicle (CAV) technology is one of the promising
solutions to addressing the safety, mobility and sustainability issues of our
current transportation systems. Specifically, the control algorithm plays an
important role in a CAV system, since it executes the commands generated by
former steps, such as communication, perception, and planning. In this study,
we propose a consensus algorithm to control the longitudinal motion of CAVs in
real time. Different from previous studies in this field where control gains of
the consensus algorithm are pre-determined and fixed, we develop algorithms to
build up a lookup table, searching for the ideal control gains with respect to
different initial conditions of CAVs in real time. Numerical simulation shows
that, the proposed lookup table-based consensus algorithm outperforms the
authors' previous work, as well as van Arem's linear feedback-based
longitudinal motion control algorithm in all four different scenarios with
various initial conditions of CAVs, in terms of convergence time and maximum
jerk of the simulation run.Comment: 2019 American Control Conference (ACC)Philadelphia, PA, USA, July
10-12, 2019978-1-5386-7928-
Motion Coordination of Multiple Autonomous Vehicles in a Spatiotemporal Flowfield
The long-term goal of this research is to provide theoretically justified control strategies to operate autonomous vehicles in spatiotemporal flowfields. The specific objective of this dissertation is to use estimation and nonlinear control techniques to generate decentralized control algorithms that enable motion coordination for multiple autonomous vehicles while operating in a time-varying flowfield. A cooperating team of vehicles can benefit from sharing data and tasking responsibilities. Many existing control algorithms promote collaboration of autonomous vehicles. However, these algorithms often fail to account for the degradation of control performance caused by flowfields. This dissertation presents decentralized multivehicle coordination algorithms designed for operation in a spatially or temporally varying flowfield. Each vehicle is represented using a Newtonian particle traveling in a plane at constant speed relative to the flow and subject to a steering control. Initially, we assume the flowfield is known and describe algorithms that stabilize a circular formation in a time-varying spatially nonuniform flow of moderate intensity. These algorithms are extended by relaxing the assumption that the flow is known: the vehicles dynamically estimate the flow and use that estimate in the control. We propose a distributed estimation and control algorithm comprising a consensus filter to share information gleaned from noisy position measurements, and an information filter to reconstruct a spatially varying flowfield. The theoretical results are illustrated with numerical simulations of circular formation control and validated in outdoor unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) flight tests
A minimal sensing and communication control strategy for adaptive platooning
Several cooperative driving strategies proposed in literature, sometimes known as cooperative adaptive cruise control strategies, assume that both relative spacing and relative velocity with preceding vehicle are available from on-board sensors (laser or radar). Alternatively, these strategies assume communication of both velocity states and acceleration inputs from preceding vehicle. However, in practice, on-board sensors can only measure relative spacing with preceding vehicle (since getting relative velocity requires additional filtering algorithms); also, reducing the number of variables communicated from preceding vehicle is crucial to save bandwidth. In this work we show that, after framing the cooperative driving task as a distributed model reference adaptive control problem, the platooning task can be achieved in a minimal sensing and communication scenario, that is, by removing relative velocity measurements with preceding vehicle and by removing communication from preceding vehicle of velocity states. In the framework we propose, vehicle parametric uncertainty is taken into account by appropriately designed adaptive laws. The proposed framework is illustrated and shown to be flexible to several standard architectures used in cooperative driving (one-vehicle look-ahead topology, leader-to-all topology, multivehicle look-ahead topology)
Safe, Remote-Access Swarm Robotics Research on the Robotarium
This paper describes the development of the Robotarium -- a remotely
accessible, multi-robot research facility. The impetus behind the Robotarium is
that multi-robot testbeds constitute an integral and essential part of the
multi-agent research cycle, yet they are expensive, complex, and time-consuming
to develop, operate, and maintain. These resource constraints, in turn, limit
access for large groups of researchers and students, which is what the
Robotarium is remedying by providing users with remote access to a
state-of-the-art multi-robot test facility. This paper details the design and
operation of the Robotarium as well as connects these to the particular
considerations one must take when making complex hardware remotely accessible.
In particular, safety must be built in already at the design phase without
overly constraining which coordinated control programs the users can upload and
execute, which calls for minimally invasive safety routines with provable
performance guarantees.Comment: 13 pages, 7 figures, 3 code samples, 72 reference
A Distributed and Privacy-Aware Speed Advisory System for Optimising Conventional and Electric Vehicles Networks
One of the key ideas to make Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) work
effectively is to deploy advanced communication and cooperative control
technologies among the vehicles and road infrastructures. In this spirit, we
propose a consensus-based distributed speed advisory system that optimally
determines a recommended common speed for a given area in order that the group
emissions, or group battery consumptions, are minimised. Our algorithms achieve
this in a privacy-aware manner; namely, individual vehicles do not reveal
in-vehicle information to other vehicles or to infrastructure. A mobility
simulator is used to illustrate the efficacy of the algorithm, and
hardware-in-the-loop tests involving a real vehicle are given to illustrate
user acceptability and ease of the deployment.Comment: This is a journal paper based on the conference paper "Highway speed
limits, optimised consensus, and intelligent speed advisory systems"
presented at the 3rd International Conference on Connected Vehicles and Expo
(ICCVE 2014) in November 2014. This is the revised version of the paper
recently submitted to the IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation
Systems for publicatio
Collision-aware Task Assignment for Multi-Robot Systems
We propose a novel formulation of the collision-aware task assignment (CATA)
problem and a decentralized auction-based algorithm to solve the problem with
optimality bound. Using a collision cone, we predict potential collisions and
introduce a binary decision variable into the local reward function for task
bidding. We further improve CATA by implementing a receding collision horizon
to address the stopping robot scenario, i.e. when robots are confined to their
task location and become static obstacles to other moving robots. The
auction-based algorithm encourages the robots to bid for tasks with collision
mitigation considerations. We validate the improved task assignment solution
with both simulation and experimental results, which show significant reduction
of overlapping paths as well as deadlocks
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