We present a computational framework for automatic synthesis of control and communication strategies for a robotic team from task specifications given as regular expressions about servicing requests in an environment....
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ISBN:
(纸本)9783642327223
We present a computational framework for automatic synthesis of control and communication strategies for a robotic team from task specifications given as regular expressions about servicing requests in an environment. Our approach is based on two main ideas. First, we extend recent results from formal synthesis of distributed systems to check for the distributability of the task specification and to generate local specifications, while accounting for the service and communication capabilities of the robots. Second, by using a technique inspired from LTL model checking, we generate individual control and communication strategies. We illustrate the method with experimental results in our Robotic Urban-Like Environment.
The article proposes a novel distributed solution to the problem of Multi-Robot Uniform Frequency Coverage (MRUFC in short), in which a team of robots are requested to repeatedly visit a set of pre-defined locations o...
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ISBN:
(纸本)9783642327223
The article proposes a novel distributed solution to the problem of Multi-Robot Uniform Frequency Coverage (MRUFC in short), in which a team of robots are requested to repeatedly visit a set of pre-defined locations of the environment with uniform frequency. With respect to other algorithms in literature, the approach proposed has extremely low requirements in terms of computational power, does not require inter-robot communication, and can even be implemented on memoryless robots, thus being easily implementable on real, marketable robot swarms.
We present here a set of decentralised control laws to facilitate lattice formation and reactive coordination and control of a swarm of mobile ground based robots. The control laws rely on local, indirect communicatio...
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ISBN:
(纸本)9783642327223
We present here a set of decentralised control laws to facilitate lattice formation and reactive coordination and control of a swarm of mobile ground based robots. The control laws rely on local, indirect communication, which we implement in the form of virtual forces governed by physics based laws, computed from range and bearing measurements relative to the individual robots. Furthermore, we introduce the Virtual Robot Node (VRN) architecture to extend the capabilities of the cooperative formation control in terms of lattice cohesion and reactive dynamic abilities. The characteristics of the control laws are analysed through a number of 3D physics-based simulation experiments. We show that the basic proposed methods exhibit robustness to simulated sensor noise. We further show a number of improvements made by employing the VRN architecture, in terms of reducing errors in specified formation constraints, and additional dynamic capabilities.
Multi-robot systems play an important role in many robotic applications. A prerequisite for a team of robots is the capability of building and maintaining updated maps of the environment. The simultaneous estimation o...
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ISBN:
(纸本)9783642327223
Multi-robot systems play an important role in many robotic applications. A prerequisite for a team of robots is the capability of building and maintaining updated maps of the environment. The simultaneous estimation of the trajectory and the map of the environment (known as SLAM) requires many computational resources. Moreover, SLAM is generally performed in environments that do not vary over time (called static environments), whereas real applications commonly require navigation services in dynamic environments. This paper focuses on long-term mapping operativity in presence of variations in the map, as in the case of robotic applications in logistic spaces, where rovers have to track the presence of goods in given areas. In this context classical SLAM approaches are generally not directly applicable, since they usually apply in static environments or in dynamic environments where it is possible to model the environment dynamics. This paper proposes a methodology that allows the robots to detect variations in the environment, generate maps containing only the persistent variations, propagate thiem to the team and finally merge the received information in a consistent way. The team of robots is also exploited to assure the coverage of areas not visited for long time, thus improving the knowledge on the present status of the map. The map updating process is demonstrated to be computationally light, in order to be performed in parallel with other tasks (e.g., team coordination and planning, surveillance).
We address the synthesis of distributed control policies for a homogeneous robot ensemble assigned to monitor multiple locations. Our approach uses an appropriate macroscopic description of the ensemble dynamics to fi...
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ISBN:
(纸本)9783642327223
We address the synthesis of distributed control policies for a homogeneous robot ensemble assigned to monitor multiple locations. Our approach uses an appropriate macroscopic description of the ensemble dynamics to first identify spurious behaviors exhibited by the ensemble as a result of robot-robot interactions that arise from operating within a shared environment. This macroscopic analysis is then used to design and improve the agent-level control policies and enhance the overall team performance. In particular, we consider the time-delayed task assignment problem where deterministic (or near deterministic) task execution times result in extraneous robot-robot interactions which degrades the ensemble efficiency. The main contribution is a novel approach towards synthesizing distributed filters to smooth out spurious interactions. We validate our distributed filter both in simulation and in actual robotic experiments.
Although there exists a large body of work on efficient data collection in sensor networks, the vast majority of proposed techniques have not been implemented on real networks or thoroughly studied on real data. As al...
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ISBN:
(纸本)9783642327223
Although there exists a large body of work on efficient data collection in sensor networks, the vast majority of proposed techniques have not been implemented on real networks or thoroughly studied on real data. As algorithm performance is highly dependent on the characteristics of-the data being reported, it is very difficult to make suggestions as to the relative performance of any particular method. In this work we seek to compare and evaluate existing approaches to efficient data gathering in the specific context of environmental monitoring. We examine a choice algorithm that has not, to the best of our knowledge, been thoroughly studied on real data. We detail a number of algorithmic modifications necessary to bring it from theory to reality, and study the algorithm's performance in simulation using extensive traces from real world sensor network deployments.
Among other multirobot formation topics, one of the most important is the maintenance of the initial formation while the robots are moving through the environment. This paper presents a new approach based on the coope...
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ISBN:
(纸本)9783642327223
Among other multirobot formation topics, one of the most important is the maintenance of the initial formation while the robots are moving through the environment. This paper presents a new approach based on the cooperation among a team of heterogeneous robots for the maintenance of multirobot formations. In this case, one of the robots, the conductor, drives the formation and the rest of robots must follow it maintaining the formation. To do that, the use of "virtual points" and Bezier curves are introduced. Moreover, in order to solve the odometry problem of the robots, visual information is introduced, which allows one robot, the leader, to monitor the positions of the "blind" robots and help them to maintain the formation. In this way, a new method based on visual-aided guidance for the maintenance of formations have been developed. The results prove that this new approach is suitable for the maintenance of formations of multiple robots.
This paper presents a case-study on the performance achieved by the mechanical interactions of self-assembling mobile robots. This study is based on the hand-bot robot, designed to operate within heterogeneous swarms ...
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ISBN:
(纸本)9783642327223
This paper presents a case-study on the performance achieved by the mechanical interactions of self-assembling mobile robots. This study is based on the hand-bot robot, designed to operate within heterogeneous swarms of robots. The hand-bot is specialized in object manipulation and can improve its performance by exploiting physical collaborations by self-assembling with other hand-bots or with foot-bots (ground robots). The paper analyzes the achieved performance and demonstrates the highly super-linear properties of the accessible volume in respect to the number of robots. These extremely interesting performances are strongly linked to the self-assembling mechanisms and the physical nature of the interaction, and do not scale to a large number of robots. Finally, this study suggests that such interesting properties are more accessible for heterogeneous systems or devices achieving complex tasks.
Swarm robotics utilizes a large number of simple robots to accomplish a task, instead of a single complex robot. Communications constraints often force these systems to be distributed and leaderless, placing restricti...
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ISBN:
(纸本)9783642327223
Swarm robotics utilizes a large number of simple robots to accomplish a task, instead of a single complex robot. Communications constraints often force these systems to be distributed and leaderless, placing restrictions on the types of algorithms which can be executed by the swarm. The performance of a swarm algorithm is affected by the environment in which the swarm operates. Different environments may call for different algorithms to be chosen, but often no single robot has enough information to make this decision. In this paper, we focus on foraging as a multi-robot task and present two distributed foraging algorithms, each of which performs best for different food locations. We then present a third adaptive algorithm in which the swarm as a whole is able to choose the best algorithm for the given situation by combining individual-level and distributed colony-level algorithm switching. We show that this adaptive method combines the benefits of the other methods, and yields the best overall performance.
In this paper, we consider the problem of controlling multiple quadrotor robots that cooperatively grasp and transport a payload in three dimensions. We model the quadrotors both individually and as a group rigidly at...
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ISBN:
(纸本)9783642327223
In this paper, we consider the problem of controlling multiple quadrotor robots that cooperatively grasp and transport a payload in three dimensions. We model the quadrotors both individually and as a group rigidly attached to a payload. We propose individual robot control laws defined with respect to the payload that stabilize the payload along three-dimensional trajectories. We detail the design of a gripping mechanism attached to each quadrotor that permits autonomous grasping of the payload. An experimental study with teams of quadrotors cooperatively grasping, stabilizing, and transporting payloads along desired three-dimensional trajectories is presented with performance analysis over many trials for different payload configurations.
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