Bearing-Only Control Laws For Balanced Circular

For a group of constant-speed ground robots, a simple control law is designed to stabilize the motion of the group into a balanced circular formation using a consensus approach. It is shown that the measurements of the bearing angles between the robots are sufficient for reaching a balanced circular formation. We consider two different scenarios that the connectivity graph of the system is either a complete graph or a ring. Collision avoidance capabilities are added to the team members and the effectiveness of the control laws are demonstrated on a group of mobile robots

Coordination in multiagent systems and Laplacian spectra of digraphs

Constructing and studying distributed control systems requires the analysis of the Laplacian spectra and the forest structure of directed graphs. In this paper, we present some basic results of this analysis partially obtained by the present authors. We also discuss the application of these results to decentralized control and touch upon some problems of spectral graph theory.Comment: 15 pages, 2 figures, 40 references. To appear in Automation and Remote Control, Vol.70, No.3, 200

Bearing-Only Control Laws For Balanced Circular Formations of Ground Robots

Abstract — For a group of constant-speed ground robots, a simple control law is designed to stabilize the motion of the group into a balanced circular formation using a consensus approach. It is shown that the measurements of the bearing angles between the robots are sufficient for reaching a balanced circular formation. We consider two different scenarios that the connectivity graph of the system is either a complete graph or a ring. Collision avoidance capabilities are added to the team members and the effectiveness of the control laws are demonstrated on a group of mobile robots. I

Hardware, Software, and Low-Level Control Scheme Development for a Real-Time Autonomous Rover

The objective of this research is to develop a low-cost autonomous rover platform for experiments in autonomous navigation. This thesis describes the design, development, and testing of an autonomous rover platform, based on the commercial, off-the-shelf Tamiya TXT-1 radio controlled vehicle. This vehicle is outfitted with an onboard computer based on the Mini-ITX architecture and an array of sensors for localization and obstacle avoidance, and programmed with Matlab/SimulinkRTM Real-Time Workshop (RTW) utilizing the Linux Real-Time Application Interface (RTAI) operating system.;First, a kinematic model is developed and verified for the rover. Then a proportional-integral-derivative (PID) feedback controller is developed for translational and rotational velocity regulation. Finally, a hybrid navigation controller is developed combining a potential field controller and an obstacle avoidance controller for waypoint tracking.;Experiments are performed to verify the functionality of the kinematic model and the PID velocity controller, and to demonstrate the capabilities of the hybrid navigation controller. These experiments prove that the rover is capable of successfully navigating in an unknown indoor environment. Suggestions for future research include the integration of additional sensors for localization and creation of multiple platforms for autonomous coordination experiments

Sistema de busca e salvamento baseado em múltiplos veículos terrestres

Esta dissertação visa o desenvolvimento de um sistema de busca e salvamento baseado em múltiplos veículos terrestres, utilizando para tal os veículos LINCE do Laboratório de Sistemas Autónomos. Tendo como principal propósito conferir autonomia aos veículos, foram estudados possíveis cenários de actuação, para determinar as principais funcionalidades requeridas do sistema. Foram também estudadas metodologias de análise e caracterização de sistemas multirobóticos, baseadas no estado da arte existente, e foi elaborada a arquitectura conceptual do sistema e dos veículos a desenvolver. A preparação dos veículos abordou o estudo das possíveis soluções sensoriais e de actuação, e o desenvolvimento de uma arquitectura de hardware capaz de interligar todos os periféricos dos mesmos. Foram adaptados novos sensores e actuadores, e desenvolvidos alguns desses sensores. Para a interligação e manutenção dos mesmos foram ainda desenvolvidos novos periféricos de interface e controlo, e periféricos de gestão de energia. Por fim, foi ainda adaptado um gestor de missões nos veículos, capaz de receber a especificação das mesmas.This dissertation aims to develop a search and rescue system, based on multiple terrestrial vehicles, using LINCE rovers from Autonomous Systems Laboratory. The main purpose of the dissertation is to make changes on these rovers, to give them some autonomy. For that, possible scenarios of action were studied to determine the main functional requirements of the system. Based on the state of the art of these systems, were also studied methods of analysis and characterization of multi-robot systems, and conceptual architectures of the system and vehicles were designed. To the vehicles design, some sensor and actuator solutions were analyzed, and a hardware architecture, capable of connecting all devices, was developed. Some sensors and actuators were adapted, and another sensor was developed. It was also developed an interface board to link some devices, and an energy board to power and control them. Finally, it was also adapted in vehicles a mission manager, capable of receiving mission speci cations

분산형 통신 및 구동부족 로봇시스템 을 위한 분할기법 기반의 반자율 원격제어 프레임워크 개발

학위논문 (박사)-- 서울대학교 대학원 : 공과대학 기계항공공학부, 2018. 2. 이동준.The framework of stable bilateral teleoperation has been well established during decades. However, the standard bilateral teleoperation framework could be a baseline for a successful telerobotics but not sufficient for real-application because they usually concentrate on only the bilateral stability. The least considered in the previous research is how to apply a complex robot systems such as multiple mobile robots or a large degree of freedom mobile manipulators for real applications. The main challenges of teleoperation of complex robotic systems in real-world are to achieve two different control objectives (i.e., follow the human command and the coordination/ stabilization of the internal movement) of the slave robots simultaneously, while providing intuitive information about the complicated features of the system. In this thesis, we develop decomposition-based semi-autonomous teleoperation framework for robotic systems which have distributed communication and underactuation property, consisting of three steps: 1) decomposition step, where the human command is defined, and the robotic system is split into the command tracking space and its orthogonal complement (i.e., internal motion)2) control design of the slave robot, in which we design the slave controller for human command tracking and stabilization/coordination of internal motion spaceand 3) feedback interface design, through which we propose a multi-modal feedback interface (for example, visual and haptic) designed with the consideration of the task and the characteristics of the system. Among numerous types of robots, in this thesis, we focus on two types of robotic systems: 1) multiple nonholonomic wheeled mobile robots (WMRs) with distributed communication requirement and 2) manipulator-stage over vertical flexible beam which is under-actuated system. The proposed framework is applied to both case step by step and perform experiments and human subject study to verify/demonstrate the proposed framework for both cases. For distributed WMRs, we consider the scenario that a single user remotely operates a platoon of nonholonomic WMRs that distributively communicate each other in unknown environment. For this, in decomposition step, we utilize nonholonomic passive decomposition to split the platoon kinematics into that of the formation-keeping aspect and the collective tele-driving aspect. Next, in control design step, we design the controls for these two aspects individually and distribute them into each WMR while fully incorporating their nonholonomic constraint and distribution requirement. Finally, in the step of feedback interface design, we also propose a novel predictive display, which, by providing the user with the estimated current and predicted future pose informations of the platoon and future possibility of collision while fully incorporating the uncertainty inherent to the distribution, can significantly enhance the tele-driving performance and easiness of the platoon. The second part is the manipulator-stage over vertical flexible beam which is under-actuated system. Here, the human command defines the desired motion of the end-effector (or the manipulator), and the vibration of the beam should be subdued at the same time. Thus, at the first step, we utilize the passive decomposition to split the dynamics into manipulator motion space and its orthogonal complement, in which we design the control for the suppression of the vibration. For human command tracking, we design the passivity-based control, and, for the suppression of the vibration, we propose two controls: LQR-based control and nonlinear control based on Lyapunov function analysis. Finally, visuo-haptic feedback interface is preliminarily designed for successful peg-in-hole tasks.1 Introduction 1 1.1 Background and Contribution 1 1.2 Related Works 4 1.2.1 Related Works on Distributed Systems 5 1.2.2 Related Works on Manipulator-Stage System 6 1.3 Outline 6 2 Preliminary 7 2.1 Passive Decomposition 7 2.1.1 Basic Notations and Properties of Standard Passive Decomposition 7 2.1.2 Nonholonomic Passive Decomposition 9 3 Semi-Autonomous Teleoperation of Nonholonomic Wheeled Mobile Robots with Distributed Communication 11 3.1 Distributed Control Design 11 3.1.1 Nonholonomic Passive Decomposition 11 3.1.2 Control Design and Distribution 19 3.2 Distributed Pose Estimation 25 3.2.1 EKF Pose Estimation of Leader WMR 25 3.2.2 EKF Pose Estimation of Follower WMRs 28 3.3 Predictive Display for Distributed Robots Teleoperation 29 3.3.1 Estimation Propagation 31 3.3.2 Prediction Propagation 34 3.4 Experiments 38 3.4.1 Test Setup 38 3.4.2 Performance Experiment 39 3.4.3 Teleoperation Experiment with Predictive Display 40 3.4.4 Human Subject Study 44 4 Semi-Autonomous Teleoperatoin of Stage-Manipulator System on Flexible Vertical Beam 49 4.1 System Modeling 49 4.1.1 System Description 49 4.1.2 Assumed Mode Shapes 51 4.1.3 Exact Solution under Given Boundary Conditions 51 4.1.4 Euler-Lagrangian Equation 61 4.2 LQR-based Control Design 62 4.2.1 Passive Decomposition 63 4.2.2 Vibration Suppression Control Design 64 4.2.3 Joint Tracking Control Design 66 4.3 Lyapunov-based Control Design 68 4.3.1 Twice Passive Decomposition for Input Coupling 69 4.3.2 Interconnected System Description 70 4.3.3 Passivity-based Manipulator Motion Control 74 4.3.4 Dissipative Control for Vibration Suppression 74 4.4 Experiments 78 4.4.1 Test Setup 78 4.4.2 Joint Tracking and Vibration Suppression Experiment 81 4.4.3 Comparison Experiment between the LQR and the Nonlinear Control 82 5 Conclusion 83 5.1 Summary 83 5.2 Future Works 83 A Appendix 85 A.1 Internal Wrench Representation 85Docto

Experiments in Multirobot Coordination

Consequent to previously published theoretical work by Marshall, Broucke, and Francis, this paper summarizes the apparatus and results of multirobot coordination experiments conducted at the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies. These experiments successfully demonstrated the practicality of cyclic pursuit as a distributed control strategy for multiple wheeled-robot systems. Moreover, the pursuit-based coordination algorithm was found to be surprisingly robust in the presence of unmodelled dynamics and delays due to sensing and information processing. The findings of this research not only bode well for continuing research on pursuit-based coordination strategies, but also for other cooperative multirobot control techniques employing similar local interactions

Experiments in multirobot coordination www.elsevier.com/locate/robot

Consequent to previously published theoretical work by Marshall, Broucke, and Francis, this paper summarizes the apparatus and results of multirobot coordination experiments conducted at the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies. These experiments successfully demonstrate the practicality of cyclic pursuit as a distributed control strategy for multiple wheeled-robot systems. The pursuit-based coordination algorithm was found to be surprisingly robust in the presence of unmodelled dynamics and delays due to sensing and information processing. Moreover, the findings of this research not only bode well for continuing research on pursuit-based coordination strategies, but also for other cooperative multirobot control techniques employing similar local interactions. c ○ 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved