Formation of Mobile Robots with Inaccurate Sensor Information

  • Published : 2001.12.01

Abstract

This paper develops a control method for some generic formation tasks of multiple mobile robots with inaccurate sensor information. Inaccurate sensor information means that all the robots have only local sensors that cannot accurately measure absolute distances and directions of objects. That is, all the sensors have limitation on the range, and uncertainty in the values. Therefore, more robust and reliable control logic is proposed and implemented. The logic is developed considering generic situations and increasing the number of robots participating in the formation. Petri nets are used for modeling and design of the control logic, which can visualize the control models and make it easy to check the states of each robot. Physically homogeneous mobile robots are designed and built to evaluate the developed logic. Each robot is equipped with eighteen infrared sensors and a UHF transceiver module. The experiment results are analyzed quantitatively by using the data of the relative distances and angles between the robots. And the trajectories of the robots during the formation are also evaluated. The developed control approach is demonstrated with experiments to be successful and efficient for the formation of autonomous mobile robots.

Keywords

References

  1. Robotics and Autonomous Systems v.16 no.2 Issues and approaches in the design of collective autonomous agents M. J. Mataric
  2. Proc. of IEEE International Conf. on Intelligent Robots and Systems Cooperative mobile robotics : antecedents and directions Y. U. Cao;A. S. Fukunaga;A. B. Kahng;F. Meng
  3. IEEE Robotics and Automation Magazine Design of the army-ant cooperative lifting robot J. S. Bay
  4. Proc. of IEEE International Conf. on Robotics and Automation Toward the development of a material transport system using swarms of ant-like robots D. J. Stilwell;J. S. Bay
  5. IEEE Trans. on Robotics and Automation v.14 no.6 Behavior-based formation control for multirobot teams T. Balch;R. C. Arkin
  6. Proc. of IEEE International Conf. on Robotics and Automation Adaptive formation control for distributed autonomous mobile robot groups H. Yamaguchi
  7. Proc. of IEEE International Conf. on Robotics and Automation Designing control laws for cooperative agent teams L. E. Parker
  8. Proc. of the IEEE International Conf. on Robotics and Automation Controlling formations of multiple mobile robots J. P. Desai;V. Kumar;J. P. Ostrowski
  9. Proc. of IEEE International Conf. on Robotics and Automation Control of changes in formation for a team of mobile robots J. P. Desai;V. Kumar;J. P. Ostrowski
  10. SIAM Journal on Computing v.28 no.4 Distributed anonymous mobile robots : formation of geometric patterns I. Suzuki;M. Yamashita
  11. Journal of Robotic Systems v.13 no.3 Distributed algorithm for formation of geometric patterns with many mobile robots K. Sugihara;I. Suzuki
  12. Journal of Robotic Systems v.14 no.2 Line and circle formation of distributed physical mobile robots X. Yun;G. Alptekin;O. Albayrak
  13. Proc. of IEEE International Conf. on Robotics and Automation Cooperative multi-robot box-pushing M. J. Mataric;M. Nilsson;K. T.Simsarian
  14. Proc. of IEEE v.77 no.4 Petri nets : properties, analysis, and application T. Murata
  15. IEEE Trans. on Industrial Electronics v.41 no.6 Petri nets and industrial applications : A Tutorial R. Zurawski;M. Zhou