2000 character limit reached
Decentralized Multi-Robot Encirclement of a 3D Target with Guaranteed Collision Avoidance (1307.7170v2)
Published 26 Jul 2013 in cs.SY, cs.MA, cs.RO, and math.OC
Abstract: We present a control framework for achieving encirclement of a target moving in 3D using a multi-robot system. Three variations of a basic control strategy are proposed for different versions of the encirclement problem, and their effectiveness is formally established. An extension ensuring maintenance of a safe inter-robot distance is also discussed. The proposed framework is fully decentralized and only requires local communication among robots; in particular, each robot locally estimates all the relevant global quantities. We validate the proposed strategy through simulations on kinematic point robots and quadrotor UAVs, as well as experiments on differential-drive wheeled mobile robots.