Constraint-induced formation switching for adaptive environmental sampling

Water quality monitoring is still mostly done by taking manual water samples and sensor measurements from boats. To enable extensive, efficient and repeatable environmental monitoring, there is a need for `ready to sample' robot systems, which do not require individual vehicle control, or a lot of prior information. This paper describes an approach to decentralized adaptive formation control for environmental sampling. An autonomous surface vehicle (ASV) leads a team of autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) to sample a lake environment. The ASV passes a constraint to the AUVs, and the AUVs use this to choose an allowed formation, and solve the assignment problem to determine their position in the formation, in a distributed manner. The approach is tested in simulation and compared to leader-follower formation control. Results show the potential for constraint-induced formation switching in adaptive formation control towards a safe, fully autonomous heterogeneous team of lake sampling robots.

[1]  Randal W. Beard,et al.  A coordination architecture for spacecraft formation control , 2001, IEEE Trans. Control. Syst. Technol..

[2]  W ReynoldsCraig.  Flocks, herds and schools: A distributed behavioral model , 1987 .

[3]  Gianluca Antonelli,et al.  The null-space-based behavioral control for autonomous robotic systems , 2008, Intell. Serv. Robotics.

[4]  Vijay Kumar,et al.  Distributed multi-robot task assignment and formation control , 2008, 2008 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

[5]  Maurizio Porfiri,et al.  Environmental tracking and formation control of a platoon of autonomous vehicles subject to limited communication , 2006, Proceedings 2006 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, 2006. ICRA 2006..

[6]  Kar-Han Tan,et al.  High Precision Formation Control of Mobile Robots Using Virtual Structures , 1997, Auton. Robots.

[7]  John J. Leonard,et al.  Cooperative AUV Navigation using a Single Maneuvering Surface Craft , 2010, Int. J. Robotics Res..

[8]  Reza Olfati-Saber,et al.  Flocking for multi-agent dynamic systems: algorithms and theory , 2006, IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control.

[9]  E Gallimore,et al.  The WHOI micromodem-2: A scalable system for acoustic communications and networking , 2010, OCEANS 2010 MTS/IEEE SEATTLE.

[10]  A.S. Morse,et al.  Information structures to secure control of rigid formations with leader-follower architecture , 2005, Proceedings of the 2005, American Control Conference, 2005..

[11]  Kar-Han Tan,et al.  Virtual structures for high-precision cooperative mobile robotic control , 1996, Proceedings of IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems. IROS '96.

[12]  Harold W. Kuhn,et al.  The Hungarian method for the assignment problem , 1955, 50 Years of Integer Programming.

[13]  John J. Leonard,et al.  An Overview of MOOS-IvP and a Brief Users Guide to the IvP Helm Autonomy Software , 2009 .

[14]  S. Singh,et al.  The WHOI micro-modem: an acoustic communications and navigation system for multiple platforms , 2005, Proceedings of OCEANS 2005 MTS/IEEE.

[15]  Rodney A. Brooks,et al.  A Robust Layered Control Syste For A Mobile Robot , 2022 .

[16]  António Manuel Santos Pascoal,et al.  Joint ASV/AUV range-based formation control: Theory and experimental results , 2013, 2013 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

[17]  Tucker R. Balch,et al.  Behavior-based formation control for multirobot teams , 1998, IEEE Trans. Robotics Autom..

[18]  Nathan Michael,et al.  Fully Decentralized Task Swaps with Optimized Local Searching , 2014, Robotics: Science and Systems.

[19]  Daniel J. Stilwell,et al.  Platoons of underwater vehicles , 2000 .

[20]  D.L. Odell,et al.  A leader-follower algorithm for multiple AUV formations , 2004, 2004 IEEE/OES Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (IEEE Cat. No.04CH37578).

[21]  John J. Leonard,et al.  Cooperative Localization for Autonomous Underwater Vehicles , 2009, Int. J. Robotics Res..

[22]  Antonio M. Pascoal,et al.  Flexible triangular formation keeping of marine robotic vehicles using range measurements. , 2014 .

[23]  Yoo Sang Choo,et al.  Leader-follower formation control of underactuated autonomous underwater vehicles , 2010 .

[24]  H. Kuhn.  The Hungarian method for the assignment problem , 1955 .