232 research outputs found
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
Design and Development of an Integrated Mobile Robot System for Use in Simple Formations
In recent years, formation control of autonomous unmanned vehicles has become an active area of research with its many broad applications in areas such as transportation and surveillance. The work presented in this thesis involves the design and implementation of small unmanned ground vehicles to be used in leader-follower formations. This mechatronics project involves breadth in areas of mechanical, electrical, and computer engineering design. A vehicle with a unicycle-type drive mechanism is designed in 3D CAD software and manufactured using 3D printing capabilities. The vehicle is then modeled using the unicycle kinematic equations of motion and simulated in MATLAB/Simulink. Simple motion tasks are then performed onboard the vehicle utilizing the vehicle model via software, and leader-follower formations are implemented with multiple vehicles
Fault-tolerant formation driving mechanism designed for heterogeneous MAVs-UGVs groups
A fault-tolerant method for stabilization and navigation of 3D heterogeneous formations is proposed in this paper. The presented Model Predictive Control (MPC) based approach enables to deploy compact formations of closely cooperating autonomous aerial and ground robots in surveillance scenarios without the necessity of a precise external localization. Instead, the proposed method relies on a top-view visual relative localization provided by the micro aerial vehicles flying above the ground robots and on a simple yet stable visual based navigation using images from an onboard monocular camera. The MPC based schema together with a fault detection and recovery mechanism provide a robust solution applicable in complex environments with static and dynamic obstacles. The core of the proposed leader-follower based formation driving method consists in a representation of the entire 3D formation as a convex hull projected along a desired path that has to be followed by the group. Such an approach provides non-collision solution and respects requirements of the direct visibility between the team members. The uninterrupted visibility is crucial for the employed top-view localization and therefore for the stabilization of the group. The proposed formation driving method and the fault recovery mechanisms are verified by simulations and hardware experiments presented in the paper
Behavioral-based circular formation control for robot swarms
This paper focuses on coordinating a robot swarm orbiting a convex path
without collisions among the individuals. The individual robots lack braking
capabilities and can only adjust their courses while maintaining their constant
but different speeds. Instead of controlling the spatial relations between the
robots, our formation control algorithm aims to deploy a dense robot swarm that
mimics the behavior of tornado schooling fish. To achieve this objective
safely, we employ a combination of a scalable overtaking rule, a guiding vector
field, and a control barrier function with an adaptive radius to facilitate
smooth overtakes. The decision-making process of the robots is distributed,
relying only on local information. Practical applications include defensive
structures or escorting missions with the added resiliency of a swarm without a
centralized command. We provide a rigorous analysis of the proposed strategy
and validate its effectiveness through numerical simulations involving a high
density of unicycles.Comment: 7 pages, ICRA submission 202
Formation control of nonholonomic mobile robots: the virtual structure approach
PhDIn recent years, there has been a considerable growth in applications of
multi-robot systems as opposed to single-robot systems. This thesis
presents our proposed solutions to a formation control problem in
which mobile robots are required to create a desired formation shape
and track a desired trajectory as a whole.
In the first instance, we study the formation control problem for unicycle
mobile robots. We propose two control algorithms based on a
cascaded approach: one based on a kinematic model of a robot and
the other based on a dynamic model. We also propose a saturated
controller in which actuator limitations are explicitly accounted for.
To demonstrate how the control algorithms work, we present an extensive
simulation and experimental study.
Thereafter we move on to formation control algorithms in which the
coordination error is explicitly defined. Thus, we are able to give conditions
for robots keeping their desired formation shape without necessarily
tracking the desired trajectory. We also introduce a controller
in which both trajectory tracking and formation shape maintenance
are achieved as well as a saturated algorithm. We validate the applicability
of the introduced controllers in simulations and experiments.
Lastly, we study the formation control problem for car-like robots. In
this case we develop a controller using the backstepping technique.
We give conditions for robots keeping their desired formation shape
while failing to track their desired trajectories and present simulation
results to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed controlle
A Survey on Passing-through Control of Multi-Robot Systems in Cluttered Environments
This survey presents a comprehensive review of various methods and algorithms
related to passing-through control of multi-robot systems in cluttered
environments. Numerous studies have investigated this area, and we identify
several avenues for enhancing existing methods. This survey describes some
models of robots and commonly considered control objectives, followed by an
in-depth analysis of four types of algorithms that can be employed for
passing-through control: leader-follower formation control, multi-robot
trajectory planning, control-based methods, and virtual tube planning and
control. Furthermore, we conduct a comparative analysis of these techniques and
provide some subjective and general evaluations.Comment: 18 pages, 19 figure
Coordinated motion of UGVs and a UAV
Coordination of autonomous mobile robots has received significant attention during the last two decades. Coordinated motion of heterogenous robot groups are more appealing due to the fact that unique advantages of different robots might be combined to increase the overall efficiency of the system. In this paper, a heterogeneous robot group composed of multiple Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGVs) and an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) collaborate in order to accomplish a predefined goal. UGVs follow a virtual leader which is defined as the projection of UAV’s position onto the horizontal plane. The UAV broadcasts its position at certain frequency. The position of the virtual leader and distances from the two closest neighbors are used to create linear and angular velocity references for each UGV. Several coordinated tasks have been presented and the results are verified by simulations where certain amount of communication delay between the vehicles is also considered. Results are quite promising
Robust Distributed Formation Control of UAVs with Higher-Order Dynamics
In this thesis, we introduce distributed formation control strategies to reach an intended linear formation for agents with a diverse array of dynamics. The suggested technique is distributed entirely, does not include inter-agent cooperation or a barrier of orientation, and can be applied using relative location information gained by agents in their local cooperation frames. We illustrate how the control optimized for agents with the simpler dynamic model, i.e., the dynamics of the single integrator, can be expanded to holonomic agents with higher dynamics such as quadrotors and non-holonomic agents such as unicycles and cars. Our suggested approach makes feedback saturations, unmodelled dynamics, and switches stable in the sensing topology. We also indicate that the control is relaxed as agents will travel along with a rotated and scaled control direction without disrupting the convergence to the desired formation. We can implement this observation to design a distributed strategy for preventing collisions. In simulations, we explain the suggested solution and further introduce a distributed robotic framework to experimentally validate the technique. Our experimental platform is made up of off-the-shelf devices that can be used to evaluate other multi-agent algorithms and verify them
- …