Coordination of Persistent Multi-Robot Formations

Date

2021-05-25

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Abstract

In collective transport, a search and rescue multi­-robot formation must preserve its shape in order to safely carry an object from one location to another. In this thesis we focus on persistent acyclic leader­-follower formations in which robots adhere to local pairwise distance constraints in order to maintain the formation as a whole. We rely on combinatorial rigidity and persistence theory, where robots are modeled as vertices and distance constraints as edges. In order to identify the formations that perform best, we define a property called diameter using the concept of waves. We hypothesize that diameter impacts the performance of a moving formation. By generating persistent acyclic leader­-follower formations, we design a set of experiments both on simulation and on a multi-­robot hardware platform. The results and analysis support our hypothesis that smaller diameter is related to better performance.

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Multi-robot formations

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