Toward the development of a material transport system using swarms of ant-like robots

A decentralized method for controlling a homogeneous swarm of autonomous mobile robots that collectively transport a single palletized load is proposed. The small tank-like robots have no advanced sensory or communications capabilities. They have no information on the position or number of other robots transporting the small pallet. Instead, all information needed by the robots is derived from the dynamics inherent when the system of robots is contacting a common rigid body. Each robot derives the required local information from a force sensor mounted at the point at which it contacts the pallet. A distributed control law is derived, and the resulting stable behavior of the system is verified by computer simulation.<<ETX>>

[1]  David P. Miller Multiple behavior-controlled micro-robots for planetary surface missions , 1990, 1990 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics Conference Proceedings.

[2]  Tad Hogg,et al.  Phase Transitions in Artificial Intelligence Systems , 1987, Artif. Intell..

[3]  Jorge Angeles,et al.  Force optimization in redundantly-actuated closed kinematic chains , 1989, Proceedings, 1989 International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

[4]  Ichiro Suzuki,et al.  Distributed motion coordination of multiple mobile robots , 1990, Proceedings. 5th IEEE International Symposium on Intelligent Control 1990.

[5]  Jean-Claude Latombe,et al.  Nonholonomic multibody mobile robots: Controllability and motion planning in the presence of obstacles , 1991, Proceedings. 1991 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

[6]  Jorge Angeles,et al.  Reducing the effects of shocks using redundant actuation , 1991, Proceedings. 1991 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

[7]  Charles A. Klein,et al.  Force interaction and allocation for the legs of a walking vehicle , 1987, IEEE Journal on Robotics and Automation.

[8]  Essameddin Badreddin,et al.  Collision avoidance in a behavior-based mobile robot design , 1991, Proceedings. 1991 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

[9]  J. Michael McCarthy,et al.  Computing the friction forces associated with a three-fingered grasp , 1985, IEEE J. Robotics Autom..

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

[11]  Pattie Maes,et al.  The Dynamics of Action Selection , 1989, IJCAI.

[12]  Jorge Angeles,et al.  Real-time force optimization in parallel kinematic chains under inequality constraints , 1991, Proceedings. 1991 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

[13]  Jing Wang,et al.  Theoretical problems for the realization of distributed robotic systems , 1991, Proceedings. 1991 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

[14]  Georges Bastin,et al.  Dynamic feedback linearization of nonholonomic wheeled mobile robots , 1992, Proceedings 1992 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

[15]  David E. Orin,et al.  Efficient algorithm for optimal force distribution-the compact-dual LP method , 1990, IEEE Trans. Robotics Autom..

[16]  Steven B. Skaar,et al.  Nonholonomic camera-space manipulation , 1992, IEEE Trans. Robotics Autom..