A Survey and Analysis of Cooperative Multi-Agent Robot Systems: Challenges and Directions

Research in the area of cooperative multi-agent robot systems has received wide attention among researchers in recent years. The main concern is to find the effective coordination among autonomous agents to perform the task in order to achieve a high quality of overall performance. Therefore, this paper reviewed various selected literatures primarily from recent conference proceedings and journals related to cooperation and coordination of multi-agent robot systems (MARS). The problems, issues, and directions of MARS research have been investigated in the literature reviews. Three main elements of MARS which are the type of agents, control architectures, and communications were discussed thoroughly in the beginning of this paper. A series of problems together with the issues were analyzed and reviewed, which included centralized and decentralized control, consensus, containment, formation, task allocation, intelligences, optimization and communications of multi-agent robots. Since the research in the field of multi-agent robot research is expanding, some issues and future challenges in MARS are recalled, discussed and clarified with future directions. Finally, the paper is concluded with some recommendations with respect to multi-agent systems

Colony of Robots for Exploration Based on Multi-Agent System

In this paper a colony of robots for closed environments exploration is presented. This small colony of robots, conformed by mobile robots and a quadcopter, is based on heterogeneous Multi-Agent System (MAS). The objective of the system is to quickly recognize a closed three-dimensional environment, without access to references such as a Global Positioning System (GPS), to perform exploration of each unit with different characteristics and perform a joint recognition. All communications work wirelessly with a system responsible of data collection, tracking and managing  ll collected information. Finally, it provides a basis for multi-agent robots which allow recognition, mapping and information gathering in places where units are efficiently deployed the entire colony’s abilities

PDC Control for Mobile Robot Formations with Virtual Reference Based on Separation-Bearing

This paper presents a development of leader-follower formation control using separation-bearing control (SBC) and Parallel Distribution Compensation (PDC) control. The formation control involves tracking of each desired trajectory by leader and follower robots. The follower trajectory is generated using SBC approach with respect to predefined trajectory of the leader. This design is used to improve formation control when initial error is given to leader. In order to maintain the formation and avoid internal collision, the error tracking of each robot must be kept near zero. Each robot is controlled by kinematic and dynamics controller which is designed using PDC and PID. The velocity reference for dynamic robots is limited. The simulation result shows the tracking errors for position and orientation with initial lateral error set at 0.5 m are less than 0.5 m and 1.2 rad which then converges to the desired value. Thus, the good trajectory formation tracking is achieved

KitRobot: A multi-platform graphical programming IDE to program mini-robotic agents

The analysis, design and development of a graphical programming IDE for mini-robotic agents allows novice users to program robotic agents by a graphical drag and drop interface, without knowing the syntax and semantics of the intermediate programming language. Our work started with the definition of the syntax and semantics of the intermediate programming language. The major work is the definition of grammar for this language. The use of a graphical drag and drop interface for programming mini-robots offers a user-friendly interface to novice users. The user can program graphically by drag and drop program parts without having expertise of the intermediate programming language. The IDE is highly flexible as it uses xml technology to store program objects (i.e. loops, conditions) and robot objects (i.e. sensors, actuators). Use of xml technology allows making major changes and updating the interface without modifying the underlying design and programming.Comment: 9 pages, IISTE - Computer Engineering and Intelligent Systems, ISSN 2222-1719 (Paper) ISSN 2222-2863 (Online) Vol.5, No.3, 201

Decentralized Discrete-Time Formation Control for Multirobot Systems

Inspired from the collective behavior of biological entities for the group motion coordination, this paper analyzes the formation control of mobile robots in discrete time where each robot can sense only the position of certain team members and the group behavior is achieved through the local interactions of robots. The main contribution is an original formal proof about the global convergence to the formation pattern represented by an arbitrary Formation Graph using attractive potential functions. The analysis is addressed for the case of omnidirectional robots with numerical simulations

Sensitivity Analysis for Linear Systems based on Reachability Sets

The problem of deciding which inputs in a model influence the most the state or output is often of practical importance, especially in the cases in which the system can be over-parameterized. In this context, a designer is required to perform sensitivity analyses so as to select which inputs are the most relevant to the problem at hand and remove those with smaller or no impact. In this paper, we tackle this issue by constructing the exact reachable set of a linear system that relates the inputs with the state of that system. By means of projections and solutions of linear optimization programs, we are able to assess which inputs drive the most the state or the output of a linear system. Illustrative examples are presented in order to provide insights on the proposed method

Exact Set-valued Estimation using Constrained Convex Generators for uncertain Linear Systems

Set-valued state estimation when in the presence of uncertainties in the model have been addressed in the literature essentially following three main approaches: i) interval arithmetic of the uncertain dynamics with the estimates; ii) factorizing the uncertainty into matrices with unity rank; and, iii) performing the convex hull for the vertices of the uncertainty space. Approach i) and ii) introduce a lot of conservatism because both disregard the relationship of the parameters with the entries of the dynamics matrix. On the other hand, approach iii) has a large growth on the number of variables required to represent the set or is approximated losing its main advantage in comparison with i) and ii). In this paper, with the application of autonomous vehicles in GPS-denied areas that resort to beacon signals for localization, we develop an exact (meaning no added conservatism) and optimal (smallest growth in the number of variables) closed-form definition for the convex hull of Convex Constrained Generators (CCGs). This results in a more efficient method to represent the minimum volume convex set corresponding to the state estimation. Given that reductions methods are still lacking in the literature for CCGs, we employ an approximation using ray-shooting that is comparable in terms of accuracy with methods for Constrained Zonotopes as the ones implemented in CORA. Simulations illustrate the greater accuracy of CCGs with the proposed convex hull operation in comparison to Constrained Zonotopes.Comment: IFAC paper to be presented at the World Congress in July 202