Region-based shape control for multi-robot systems

• Main Author: Hou, Paul Saing.
• Other Authors: Cheah Chien Chern
• Format: Theses and Dissertations
• Language: English
• Published: 2012
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering::Electrical and electronic engineering::Control and instrumentation::Robotics
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/48048
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Formation control of multi-robot systems has received a lot of attention from the robotic community in the past decades. While many methods have been proposed, the positions of the robots or relative positions between robots in the formation must be defined in order for the robots to form a specific shape. Therefore, as the number of robots increases, it becomes more difficult to specify the positions for all the robots. Hence, the existing control methods are not suitable to control a large group of robots to form a specific shape. The purpose of this thesis is to propose a control method for a large group of robots to form a desired shape in a decentralized fashion. A region-based shape control method for a swarm of robots is proposed for this purpose. Using this region control concept, a shape control for the robots can be done at a higher level in term of inequality functions without having to define the specific positions for all the robots in the systems. Therefore, this control method scales well with the size of robots in the systems in the sense that introduction of new robots into the systems will not increase the complexity of the controller. The dynamic uncertainty in the modeling of robots is also considered. A multiplicative potential energy function is introduced to achieve a more complex shape control. A transformation mapping is then used to enable to robot to scale and rotate while moving together in the formation. Finally, a simple PD control scheme is proposed for controlling a large group of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) to avoid the computational complexity of the controller.