Distributed Coordination Theory For Ground And Aerial Robot Teams

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Distributed Coordination Theory for Ground and Aerial Robot Teams

This thesis investigates distributed coordination problems for two important classes of robots. One class corresponds to ground-based mobile robots, each modelled as a kinematic unicycle. The second corresponds to flying robots, each propelled by a thrust vector and endowed with an actuation mechanism producing torques about three orthogonal body axes. The following coordination problems are studied in this thesis: rendezvous, formation control, linear and circular formation flocking and formation path following. For rendezvous of kinematic unicycles, a smooth, time-independent control law is presented that drives the unicycles to a common position from arbitrary initial conditions, under the assumption that the sensing digraph is time-invariant and contains a globally reachable node. The proposed feedback is very simple and is local and distributed. For rendezvous of flying robots, a control strategy is presented that makes the centres of mass of the vehicles converge to an arbitrarily small neighborhood of one another. The convergence is global, and each vehicle can compute its own control input using local and distributed feedback. For formation control, the objective is to make an ensemble of kinematic unicycles achieve pre-defined inter-agent spacings with parallel heading angles. We consider scenarios where the formation either stops or moves with a final collective motion. In the latter case, problems of linear and circular formation flocking and formation path following are studied. A control law is presented in each case that solves the problem for almost all initial conditions. For stopping and flocking formations, the proposed control laws are local and distributed while for formation path following, the control laws additionally require each agent to measure its displacement from the path. The idea used to solve the formation control problems is to rigidly attach an offset vector to the body frame of each unicycle. It is shown that stabilizing the desired formation amounts to achieving consensus of the endpoints of the offset vectors, and simultaneously synchronizing the unicycles' heading angles. Extension of formation control to flying robots using strictly local and distributed feedback is not addressed in this work and remains a challenging open problem.
Distributed Coordination Theory for Robot Teams

Distributed Coordination Theory for Robot Teams develops control algorithms to coordinate the motion of autonomous teams of robots in order to achieve some desired collective goal. It provides novel solutions to foundational coordination problems, including distributed algorithms to make quadrotor helicopters rendezvous and to make ground vehicles move in formation along circles or straight lines. The majority of the algorithms presented in this book can be implemented using on-board cameras. The book begins with an introduction to coordination problems, such as rendezvous of flying robots, and modelling. It then provides a solid theoretical background in basic stability, graph theory and control primitives. The book discusses the algorithmic solutions for numerous distributed control problems, focusing primarily on flying robotics and kinematic unicycles. Finally, the book looks to the future, and suggests areas discussed which could be pursued in further research. This book will provide practitioners, researchers and students in the field of control and robotics new insights in distributed multi-agent systems.
Principles and Practice of Multi-Agent Systems

Author: Nirmit Desai
language: en
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Release Date: 2012-01-09
This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-conference proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Principles and Practice of Multi-Agent Systems, PRIMA 2010, held in Kolkata, India, in November 2010. The 18 full papers presented together with 15 early innovation papers were carefully reviewed and selected from over 63 submissions. They focus on practical aspects of multiagent systems and cover topics such as agent communication, agent cooperation and negotiation, agent reasoning, agent-based simulation, mobile and semantic agents, agent technologies for service computing, agent-based system development, ServAgents workshop, IAHC workshop, and PRACSYS workshop.