2024/11/17 by Silveria, Dimitria, Cabral, Kleber, Jardine, Peter +1
#FOS: Computer and information sciences #FOS: Electrical engineering #FOS: Mathematics #Geometric Topology (math.GT) #Robotics (cs.RO) #Systems and Control (eess.SY) #electronic engineering #information engineering
paper · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2411.11142
This work investigates the self-organization of multi-agent systems into closed trajectories, a common requirement in unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) surveillance tasks. In such scenarios, smooth, unbiased control signals save energy and mitigate mechanical strain. We propose a decentralized control system architecture that produces a globally stable emergent structure from local observations only; there is no requirement for agents to share a global plan or follow prescribed trajectories. Central to our approach is the formulation of an injective virtual embedding induced by rotations from the actual agent positions. This embedding serves as a structure-preserving map around which all agent stabilize their relative positions and permits the use of well-established linear control techniques. We construct the embedding such that it is topologically equivalent to the desired trajectory (i.e., a homeomorphism), thereby preserving the stability characteristics. We demonstrate the versatility of this approach through implementation on a swarm of Quanser QDrone quadcopters. Results demonstrate the quadcopters self-organize into the desired trajectory while maintaining even separation.