Distributed centroid estimation and motion controllers for collective transport by multi-robot systems

This paper presents four distributed motion controllers to enable a group of robots to collectively transport an object towards a guide robot. These controllers include: rotation around a pivot robot, rotation in-place around an estimated centroid of the object, translation, and a combined motion of rotation and translation in which each manipulating robot follows a trochoid path. Three of these controllers require an estimate of the centroid of the object, to use as the axis of rotation. Assuming the object is surrounded by manipulator robots, we approximate the centroid of the object by measuring the centroid of the manipulating robots. Our algorithms and controllers are fully distributed and robust to changes in network topology, robot population, and sensor error. We tested all of the algorithms in real-world environments with 9 robots, and show that the error of the centroid estimation is low, and that all four controllers produce reliable motion of the object.

[1]  James McLurkin,et al.  Dynamic Task Assignment in Robot Swarms , 2005, Robotics: Science and Systems.

[2]  Marco Dorigo,et al.  Towards group transport by swarms of robots , 2009, Int. J. Bio Inspired Comput..

[3]  Spring Berman,et al.  Experimental Study and Modeling of Group Retrieval in Ants as an Approach to Collective Transport in Swarm Robotic Systems , 2011, Proceedings of the IEEE.

[4]  James McLurkin,et al.  Distributed Path Planning for Collective Transport Using Homogeneous Multi-robot Systems , 2014, DARS.

[5]  Vijay R. Kumar,et al.  Decentralized Algorithms for Multirobot Manipulation via Caging , 2002, WAFR.

[6]  Yu Zhou,et al.  A robot system design for low-cost multi-robot manipulation , 2014, 2014 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems.

[7]  J. Y. S. Luh,et al.  Coordination and control of a group of small mobile robots , 1994, Proceedings of the 1994 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

[8]  Edwin Olson,et al.  AprilTag: A robust and flexible visual fiducial system , 2011, 2011 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

[9]  Reza Olfati-Saber,et al.  Consensus and Cooperation in Networked Multi-Agent Systems , 2007, Proceedings of the IEEE.

[10]  Andrea Gasparri,et al.  Decentralized centroid estimation for multi-agent systems in absence of any common reference frame , 2009, 2009 American Control Conference.

[11]  Mohamed F. Younis,et al.  A survey on routing protocols for wireless sensor networks , 2005, Ad Hoc Networks.

[12]  M. Ani Hsieh,et al.  Multi-robot manipulation via caging in environments with obstacles , 2008, 2008 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

[13]  Mac Schwager,et al.  Pipelined Consensus for Global State Estimation in Multi-Agent Systems , 2015, AAMAS.

[14]  Vijay Kumar,et al.  Decentralized Algorithms for Multi-Robot Manipulation via Caging , 2004, Int. J. Robotics Res..

[15]  James McLurkin,et al.  Analysis and implementation of distributed algorithms for multi-robot systems , 2008 .

[16]  Radhika Nagpal,et al.  Collective transport of complex objects by simple robots: theory and experiments , 2013, AAMAS.

[17]  Hiroyuki Kojima,et al.  Cooperative Obstacle-Avoidance Pushing Transportation of a Planar Object with One Leader and Two Follower Mobile Robots , 2005, J. Robotics Mechatronics.

[18]  Mac Schwager,et al.  Multi-robot Manipulation Without Communication , 2014, DARS.

[19]  Gaurav S. Sukhatme,et al.  Spreading Out: A Local Approach to Multi-robot Coverage , 2002, DARS.

[20]  Marco Dorigo,et al.  Object transport by modular robots that self-assemble , 2006, Proceedings 2006 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, 2006. ICRA 2006..