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Communications in Control Science and Engineering (CCSE) Volume 3, 2015
Distributed Coordination Control of Multi-Robot with Electronic Tags Binbin Cen1,a, Xianzhong Zhou*2,ab Department of Control and Systems Engineering, SME, Nanjing University
a
Research Center for Novel Technology of Intelligent Equipments at Nanjing University, Nanjing, China
b
477636880@qq.com; *2zhouxz@nju.edu.cn
1
Abstract Distributed coordination control has been an active research field in the multi-robot communities. In this paper, we present an approach for coordination and tracking of multi-robot system. The approach relies on the communication of robots and a RFID (Radio Frequency Identification)-based location method. The RFID module provides the relatively accurate location, which is shared between the robots. Our goal is to design a control algorithm for each robot to keep a desired shape of formation and simultaneously track a single target. The approach balances the formation shape and the tracking error, and the experimental results demonstrate the success of the proposed approach regarding the performance indicators. Keywords Distributed Coordination; Formation; Tracking; RFID; Multi-robot
Introduction Coordination is one of the most interesting fields in Artificial Intelligence and Robotics. In some respects, a single robot has difficulties in accomplishing tasks. The robots working together can not only complete complex tasks, but also improve the efficiency. The formation and tracking of multiple mobile robots have been extensively studied in the last decades. In [1, 2, 3], potential function approach was proposed for formation control. The basic of this approach is to create an energy function of distance between any two robots. In [4], behavior-based formation control was used for multi-robot. In [5, 6], decentralized formation control avoiding collision and obstacles for multi-robot were given. In [7, 8], the communication and location were considered to make an optimum environment for coordination. In [9], a passive proximity binary sensor-based multiple target tracking system was investigated, which can achieve the self-organized tracking capabilities without the intervention of human operators. In [10], a dynamic distributed algorithm was proposed for tracking objects that move fast in a sensor network. However, these researches were proposed without considering the real robot control or making too many constraints. In this paper, we propose a distributed control method for coordination of multiple mobile robots. Unlike a centralized control method, which integrates all robots’ information and decides every robot’s next action, in this approach, each robot can take decisions on its own behavior according to its knowledge of the environment and its neighbors’ status. The main contribution of this paper is that our control algorithm makes it possible to coordinate behavior while tracking a single target. The group trajectory is dynamic changing due to the target’s behavior or goal doesn’t be known by the group in advance. The paper is organized as follows. In the next section, we give the system architecture, and the coordination control algorithm design. Then we present the experiment and simulation results. Finally, we draw some conclusions. System Architecture The system architecture for multi-robot is shown in Fig.1. The modules for each robot are organized into three layers: the sensing actuator layer, the planning and decision-making layer and the communication layer. Every robot perceives the environment and exchanges data with others at the same time, in order to integrate information
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