319 research outputs found
Enclosing a moving target with an optimally rotated and scaled multiagent pattern
We propose a novel control method to enclose a moving target in a two-dimensional setting with a team of agents forming a prescribed geometric pattern. The approach optimises a measure of the overall agent motion costs, via the minimisation of a suitably defined cost function encapsulating the pattern rotation and scaling. We propose two control laws which use global information and make the agents exponentially converge to the prescribed formation with an optimal scale that remains constant, while the team's centroid tracks the target. One control law results in a multiagent pattern that keeps a constant orientation in the workspace; for the other, the pattern rotates with constant speed. These behaviours, whose optimality and steadiness are very relevant for the task addressed, occur independently from the target's velocity. Moreover, the methodology does not require distance measurements, common coordinate references, or communications. We also present formal guarantees of collision avoidance for the proposed approach. Illustrative simulation examples are provided
Assignment Algorithms for Multi-Robot Multi-Target Tracking with Sufficient and Limited Sensing Capability
We study the problem of assigning robots with actions to track targets. The
objective is to optimize the robot team's tracking quality which can be defined
as the reduction in the uncertainty of the targets' states. Specifically, we
consider two assignment problems given the different sensing capabilities of
the robots. In the first assignment problem, a single robot is sufficient to
track a target. To this end, we present a greedy algorithm (Algorithm 1) that
assigns a robot with its action to each target. We prove that the greedy
algorithm has a 1/2 approximation bound and runs in polynomial time. Then, we
study the second assignment problem where two robots are necessary to track a
target. We design another greedy algorithm (Algorithm 2) that assigns a pair of
robots with their actions to each target. We prove that the greedy algorithm
achieves a 1/3 approximation bound and has a polynomial running time. Moreover,
we illustrate the performance of the two greedy algorithms in the ROS-Gazebo
environment where the tracking patterns of one robot following one target using
Algorithm 1 and two robots following one target using Algorithm 2 are clearly
observed. Further, we conduct extensive comparisons to demonstrate that the two
greedy algorithms perform close to their optimal counterparts and much better
than their respective (1/2 and 1/3) approximation bounds
Hierarchical Control of a Team of Quadrotors for Cooperative Active Target Tracking
International audienceThis paper proposes a novel active target tracking strategy for a team of cooperating quadrotors equipped with 3-D range-finding sensors. The work builds upon previous research of the authors, and adopts a realistic nonlinear dynamic model for the quadrotors. A hierarchical controller is designed for the generation and tracking of the desired optimal trajectories of the aerial vehicles, and a discrete-time Kalman filter is used for fusing their local estimates of the target position. Under suitable conditions, it is shown that the cost function for the D-optimality criterion that the quadrotors aim at collaboratively reduce, possesses a single global minimum and no local minima. Numerical simulations and real-world experiments show the effectiveness of the proposed control strategy
Nested Distributed Gradient Methods with Adaptive Quantized Communication
In this paper, we consider minimizing a sum of local convex objective
functions in a distributed setting, where communication can be costly. We
propose and analyze a class of nested distributed gradient methods with
adaptive quantized communication (NEAR-DGD+Q). We show the effect of performing
multiple quantized communication steps on the rate of convergence and on the
size of the neighborhood of convergence, and prove R-Linear convergence to the
exact solution with increasing number of consensus steps and adaptive
quantization. We test the performance of the method, as well as some practical
variants, on quadratic functions, and show the effects of multiple quantized
communication steps in terms of iterations/gradient evaluations, communication
and cost.Comment: 9 pages, 2 figures. arXiv admin note: text overlap with
arXiv:1709.0299
Adoption of vehicular ad hoc networking protocols by networked robots
This paper focuses on the utilization of wireless networking in the robotics domain. Many researchers have already equipped their robots with wireless communication capabilities, stimulated by the observation that multi-robot systems tend to have several advantages over their single-robot counterparts. Typically, this integration of wireless communication is tackled in a quite pragmatic manner, only a few authors presented novel Robotic Ad Hoc Network (RANET) protocols that were designed specifically with robotic use cases in mind. This is in sharp contrast with the domain of vehicular ad hoc networks (VANET). This observation is the starting point of this paper. If the results of previous efforts focusing on VANET protocols could be reused in the RANET domain, this could lead to rapid progress in the field of networked robots. To investigate this possibility, this paper provides a thorough overview of the related work in the domain of robotic and vehicular ad hoc networks. Based on this information, an exhaustive list of requirements is defined for both types. It is concluded that the most significant difference lies in the fact that VANET protocols are oriented towards low throughput messaging, while RANET protocols have to support high throughput media streaming as well. Although not always with equal importance, all other defined requirements are valid for both protocols. This leads to the conclusion that cross-fertilization between them is an appealing approach for future RANET research. To support such developments, this paper concludes with the definition of an appropriate working plan
- …