Brief paper: Region-based shape control for a swarm of robots

  • Authors:

  • Chien Chern Cheah;Saing Paul Hou;Jean Jacques E. Slotine

  • Affiliations:

  • School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Block S1, Nanyang Avenue, S(639798), Republic of Singapore;School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Block S1, Nanyang Avenue, S(639798), Republic of Singapore;Nonlinear Systems Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA

  • Venue:
  • Automatica (Journal of IFAC)
  • Year:
  • 2009

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Abstract

This paper presents a region-based shape controller for a swarm of robots. In this control method, the robots move as a group inside a desired region while maintaining a minimum distance among themselves. Various shapes of the desired region can be formed by choosing the appropriate objective functions. The robots in the group only need to communicate with their neighbors and not the entire community. The robots do not have specific identities or roles within the group. Therefore, the proposed method does not require specific orders or positions of the robots inside the region and yet different formations can be formed for a swarm of robots. A Lyapunov-like function is presented for convergence analysis of the multi-robot systems. Simulation results illustrate the performance of the proposed controller.