Dynamic Control of Mobile Multirobot Systems: The Cluster Space Formulation

The formation control technique called cluster space control promotes simplified specification and monitoring of the motion of mobile multirobot systems of limited size. Previous paper has established the conceptual foundation of this approach and has experimentally verified and validated its use for various systems implementing kinematic controllers. In this paper, we briefly review the definition of the cluster space framework and introduce a new cluster space dynamic model. This model represents the dynamics of the formation as a whole as a function of the dynamics of the member robots. Given this model, generalized cluster space forces can be applied to the formation, and a Jacobian transpose controller can be implemented to transform cluster space compensation forces into robot-level forces to be applied to the robots in the formation. Then, a nonlinear model-based partition controller is proposed. This controller cancels out the formation dynamics and effectively decouples the cluster space variables. Computer simulations and experimental results using three autonomous surface vessels and four land rovers show the effectiveness of the approach. Finally, sensitivity to errors in the estimation of cluster model parameters is analyzed.Fil: Mas, Ignacio Agustin. Instituto Tecnológico de Buenos Aires; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Kitts, Christopher. Santa Clara University; Estados Unido

Dynamic Guarding of Marine Assets Through Cluster Control of Automated Surface Vessel Fleets

There is often a need to mark or patrol marine areas in order to prevent boat traffic from approaching critical regions, such as the location of a high-value vessel, a dive site, or a fragile marine ecosystem. In this paper, we describe the use of a fleet of robotic kayaks that provides such a function: the fleet circumnavigates the critical area until a threatening boat approaches, at which point the fleet establishes a barrier between the ship and the protected area. Coordinated formation control of the fleet is implemented through the use of the cluster-space control architecture, which is a full-order controller that treats the fleet as a virtual, articulating, kinematic mechanism. An application-specific layer interacts with the cluster-space controller in order for an operator to directly specify and monitor guarding-related parameters, such as the spacing between boats. This system has been experimentally verified in the field with a fleet of robotic kayaks. In this paper, we describe the control architecture used to establish the guarding behavior, review the design of the robotic kayaks, and present experimental data regarding the functionality and performance of the system.Fil: Mahacek, Paul. Santa Clara University; Estados UnidosFil: Kitts, Christopher A.. Santa Clara University; Estados UnidosFil: Mas, Ignacio Agustin. Santa Clara University; Estados Unidos. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentin

Trajectory Following with a MAV under Rotor Fault Conditions

Lately, a novel multirotor aerial vehicle capable of handling single rotor failures was presented. When a rotor fails, physically reconfiguring one of the remaining rotors of an hexarotor allows to compensate for maneuverability limitations. In this work, experimental results show the per- formance of the vehicle in a trajectory-following task in both nominal and fault conditions.Fil: Pose, Claudio Daniel. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ingeniería. Departamento de Electronica; ArgentinaFil: Francisco Presenza. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ingeniería. Departamento de Electronica; ArgentinaFil: Mas, Ignacio Agustin. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Instituto Tecnológico de Buenos Aires; ArgentinaFil: Giribet, Juan Ignacio. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ingeniería. Departamento de Electronica; Argentina. Instituto Tecnológico de Buenos Aires; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Saavedra 15. Instituto Argentino de Matemática Alberto Calderón; Argentina11th International Micro Air Vehicle Competition and ConferenceMadridEspañaUniversidad Politécnica de MadridConsejo Superior de Investigaciones Científica

Aerial multi-camera robotic jib crane

A formulation based on a team of unmanned aerial vehicles operating as a fully articulated multi-camera jib crane is proposed for the application of aerial cinematography. An optimization-based controller commands the formation to follow an artistic trajectory defined by the director of photography, while actively avoiding collisions and cameras' mutual visibility. The proposed scheme, based on the cluster-space formulation, presents an intuitive way of maneuvering the virtual camera fixture while automatically adjusting the motions by imposing artistic and safety constraints, facilitating the operator task.Fil: Moreno, Patricio. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Saavedra 15. Instituto Argentino de Matemática Alberto Calderón; Argentina. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ingeniería. Departamento de Electronica; ArgentinaFil: Presenza, Juan Francisco. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ingeniería. Departamento de Electronica; ArgentinaFil: Mas, Ignacio Agustin. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Instituto Tecnológico de Buenos Aires; ArgentinaFil: Giribet, Juan Ignacio. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ingeniería. Departamento de Electronica; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Saavedra 15. Instituto Argentino de Matemática Alberto Calderón; Argentin

Trajectory following with a MAV under Rotor Fault Conditions

Lately, a novel multirotor aerial vehicle capable of handling single rotor failures was presented. When a rotor fails, physically reconfiguring one of the remaining rotors of a hexarotor allows to compensate for maneuverability limitations. In this work, experimental results show the performance of the vehicle in a trajectory-following task in both nominal and fault conditions.Fil: Pose, Claudio Daniel. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ingeniería; ArgentinaFil: Presenza, Juan Francisco. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ingeniería; ArgentinaFil: Mas, Ignacio Agustin. Instituto Tecnológico de Buenos Aires. Departamento de Física - Matemática; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Giribet, Juan Ignacio. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ingeniería; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Saavedra 15. Instituto Argentino de Matemática Alberto Calderón; Argentin

Quaternions and Dual Quaternions: Singularity-Free Multirobot Formation Control

Cluster space control is a method of multirobot formation keeping that considers a group of robots to be a single entity, defining state variables to represent characteristics of the group, such as position, orientation, and shape. This technique, however, suffers from singularities when a minimal state representation is used. This paper presents three alternative implementations of this control approach that eliminate singularities through changes in the control architecture or through redundant formation definitions. These proposed solutions rely on quaternions, dual quaternions, and control implementations that produce singularity-free trajectories while maintaining a cluster level abstraction that allows for simple specification and monitoring. A key component of this work is a novel concept of representing formation shape parameters with dual quaternions. Simulation results show the feasibility of the proposed solutions and illustrate their differences and limitations.Fil: Mas, Ignacio Agustin. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Instituto Tecnológico de Buenos Aires; ArgentinaFil: Kitts, Christopher. Santa Clara University; Estados Unido

Vision-based integrated navigation system and optimal allocation in formation flying

This article proposes an integrated navigation system for multiple micro aerial vehicles flying in formation. A data fusion algorithm uses measurements from an inertial measurement unit, a GPS receiver and a camera allowing to use the positioning information of the surrounding vehicles to improve its estimation. A measure of the navigation performance of the formation is defined. Based on such measure, the position where each vehicle should be located in the formation is studied to guarantee the best overall navigation quality.Fil: Giribet, Juan Ignacio. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ingeniería. Departamento de Electronica; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Saavedra 15. Instituto Argentino de Matemática Alberto Calderón; ArgentinaFil: Mas, Ignacio Agustin. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Saavedra 15. Instituto Argentino de Matemática Alberto Calderón; ArgentinaFil: Moreno, Patricio. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Saavedra 15. Instituto Argentino de Matemática Alberto Calderón; ArgentinaInternational Conference on Unmanned Aerial SystemsDallasEstados UnidosInstitute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Robotics and Automation Societ

Coordinated ASV-UAV control for marine collision-free navigation

There is an increasing interest in replacing a unique, complex, and expensive vehicle equipped with several sensors with a group of small vehicles, each of them carrying fewer sensors. There are several advantages in these segmented architectures, such as cost, flexibility, redundancy, and robustness, among others. The advantage of segmented architectures is even more noticeable if the vehicles carrying those sensors have different characteristics or environments of operation, e.g. aerial, terrestrial or marine vehicles. This work proposes a multi-robot system where an autonomous marine vehicle avoids obstacles relying on aerial images provided by an autonomous flying vehicle. Both robots navigate in a coordinated fashion increasing the detection area and allowing to adjust the obstacle detection horizon. In order to validate the control scheme two simulation scenarios are presented.Fil: Garberoglio, Leonardo. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro de Investigaciones y Transferencia de San Nicolás. - Universidad Tecnológica Nacional. Facultad Regional San Nicolás. Centro de Investigaciones y Transferencia de San Nicolás; ArgentinaFil: Mas, Ignacio Agustin. Instituto Tecnológico de Buenos Aires. Departamento de Matemática. Centro de Sistemas y Control; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Giribet, Juan Ignacio. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ingeniería; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Bahía Blanca. Instituto de Investigaciones en Ingeniería Eléctrica "Alfredo Desages". Universidad Nacional del Sur. Departamento de Ingeniería Eléctrica y de Computadoras. Instituto de Investigaciones en Ingeniería Eléctrica "Alfredo Desages"; ArgentinaXVIII Workshop on Information Processing and Control (RPIC) = XVIII Reunión de Trabajo en Procesamiento de la Información y ControlBahía BlancaArgentinaConsejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Bahía Blanca. Instituto de Investigaciones en Ingeniería Eléctrica "Alfredo Desages"Universidad Nacional del Sur. Departamento de Ingeniería Eléctrica y de Computadora

Validación experimental de la tolerancia a fallas en un hexa-rotor con rotores inclinados

Recientemente han surgido algunos trabajos re-portando las ventajas de volar con multicópteros con rotoresinclinados, es decir rotores que no apunten en la dirección dela vertical del vehı́culo. En particular se demostró que paralograr un vehı́culo hexa-rotor capaz de tolerar fallas en unode sus rotores, es necesario que éstos estén inclinados. Hastael momento las validaciones experimentales de estos resultadoshan considerado fallas parciales en los rotores, más precisamentese han analizado casos en los cuales uno de los rotores pierdecapacidad de empuje. Sin embargo, los resultados teóricosadmiten una falla total de los rotores, es decir que uno de losrotores se detenga completamente. En este trabajo validamosexperimentalmente la falla total de un rotor y mostramos cómoun vehı́culo hexa-rotor es capaz de mantener su capacidad demaniobra ante la pérdida total de uno de sus rotores.Fil: Giribet, Juan Ignacio. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Saavedra 15. Instituto Argentino de Matemática Alberto Calderón; ArgentinaFil: Pose Claudio. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ingeniería; ArgentinaFil: Mas, Ignacio Agustin. Instituto Tecnológico de Buenos Aires; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaIX Jornadas Argentinas de Robótica - JAR 2017CordobaArgentinaUniversidad Tecnológica Nacional. Facultad Regional Córdob

Fault-Tolerant Systems for Unmanned Multirotor Aerial Vehicles

This chapter presents some recent results on fault-tolerant control systems for un-manned aerial systems, inparticular for multirotor-typevehicles, commonly known asdrones. Over the last years, these vehicles have become widely popular. Simplicityand cost-effectiveness have turned out to be very appealing and, as a consequence,an increasing number of applications have risen in many fields such as agriculture,surveillance, and photography, among others. As mission requirements become moredemanding, the matter of fault tolerance emerges as a key challenge, especially if sys-tem certification is sought.Here, the focus is placed particularly on rotor failures in multirotor vehicles, anda specific definition for fault tolerance is considered based on the maneuverabilitycapabilities in case of a failure. A geometric analysis is presented to evaluate the faulttolerantcapabilitiesof agiven vehicle, togetherwithanexperimental validation. Then,the limitationsofthis concept are analyzed. Finally, a novel reconfigurable structure isproposedfor a fault-toleranthexarotor, that presents goodflight performance infailurecases, together with experimental results.Fil: Giribet, Juan Ignacio. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Saavedra 15. Instituto Argentino de Matemática Alberto Calderón; ArgentinaFil: Pose, Claudio D.. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ingeniería; ArgentinaFil: Mas, Ignacio Agustin. Instituto Tecnológico de Buenos Aires; Argentina. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ingeniería; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentin