2021/03/23 by Weijia Yao, Yao, Weijia, Héctor García de Marina +5
Computer Science · Engineering · #Adaptive Control of Nonlinear Systems #Distributed Control Multi-Agent Systems #FOS: Computer and information sciences #FOS: Electrical engineering #Robotic Path Planning Algorithms #Robotics (cs.RO) #Systems and Control (eess.SY) #electronic engineering #information engineering
paper · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2103.12372
openalex publication_date 2021/03/23 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
It is essential in many applications to impose a scalable coordinated motion control on a large group of mobile robots, which is efficient in tasks requiring repetitive execution, such as environmental monitoring. In this paper, we design a guiding vector field to guide multiple robots to follow possibly different desired paths while coordinating their motions. The vector field uses a path parameter as a virtual coordinate that is communicated among neighboring robots. Then, the virtual coordinate is utilized to control the relative parametric displacement between robots along the paths. This enables us to design a saturated control algorithm for a Dubins-car-like model. The algorithm is distributed, scalable, and applicable for any smooth paths in an n-dimensional configuration space, and global convergence is guaranteed. Simulations with up to fifty robots and outdoor experiments with fixed-wing aircraft validate the theoretical results.