AUTONOMOUS SYSTEMS

Formation Control
Pedro U. Lima M. Isabel Ribeiro Institute for Systems and Robotics Instituto Superior Tcnico Lisbon, Portugal April 2011

Autonomous Systems

2007 - Pedro Lima, M. Isabel Ribeiro

Cooperative Systems

Why Cooperating?
multiple potential applications: cooperation helps addressing some types of tasks

Autonomous Systems

2007 - Pedro Lima, M. Isabel Ribeiro

Cooperative Systems

Why Studying Cooperation?

insight into social and life sciences

Autonomous Systems

2007 - Pedro Lima, M. Isabel Ribeiro

Cooperative Systems

Formation Control
Goal: Controlling a set of robots to keep specified relative distances and orientations. Optional: formation deforms in the presence of obstacles

Autonomous Systems

2007 - Pedro Lima, M. Isabel Ribeiro

Cooperative Systems

Formation Control
SEVERAL EXAMPLES ON REAL ROBOT APPLICATIONS

http://webuser.unicas.it/lai/robotica/video.html http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKxSqgPIQ0k http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_NrA5DwIcc http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=TheDmel#g/u http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CR5y8qZf0Y

Autonomous Systems

2007 - Pedro Lima, M. Isabel Ribeiro

Cooperative Systems

Formation Control
Formation types: 1. leader-follower (follower is in charge of keeping specs) 2. no leaders (both robots engage in keeping the specs)

1.

Graph representation: nodes represent vehicles edges represent desired distances and/or bearings, communication links,

2.

xo
Autonomous Systems 2007 - Pedro Lima, M. Isabel Ribeiro

Cooperative Systems

Formation Control
Rigid Formations V. Kumar and co-workers [1][2]

Non-holonomic robot kinematics

vehicle i

differential-drive or unicycle vehicles

Autonomous Systems

2007 - Pedro Lima, M. Isabel Ribeiro

Cooperative Systems

Formation Control
Rigid Formations V. Kumar and co-workers [1][2]

Control Modules

Separation-bearing
Autonomous Systems 2007 - Pedro Lima, M. Isabel Ribeiro

Separation-separation
Cooperative Systems

Formation Control
Separation-bearing
Robot j follows robot i with desired separation lijd desired bearing ijd
Velocity set points for the follower

where d is the distance from the wheel axis to a reference point on the follower robot, and

Autonomous Systems

2007 - Pedro Lima, M. Isabel Ribeiro

Cooperative Systems

Formation Control
Separation-separation
Robot k follows robots i and j with desired separation likd and ljkd
Velocity set points for the follower

where d is the distance from the wheel axis to a reference point on thefollower robot, and , s and defined as before

Autonomous Systems

2007 - Pedro Lima, M. Isabel Ribeiro

Cooperative Systems

Formation Control
Rigid Formations V. Kumar and co-workers [1][2]

Control Modules

Separation-distance to obstacle
Autonomous Systems 2007 - Pedro Lima, M. Isabel Ribeiro Cooperative Systems

Formation Control
Separation-distance to obstacle
Robot j follows robots i with desired separation lijd distance from an obstacle to the follower Virtual robot R0 is defined, which moves on the obstacle boundary with velocity v0 orientation 0

Autonomous Systems

2007 - Pedro Lima, M. Isabel Ribeiro

Cooperative Systems

Formation Control
Separation-distance to obstacle
Robot j follows robots i with desired separation lijd distance from an obstacle to the follower
Velocity set points for the follower

where d is the distance from the wheel axis to a reference point on the follower robot, and , s and defined as before

and 0 is the desired distance from the follower to the obstacle 0 j ij = k , i.e., if vectors and lij are collinear Feedback I/O linearization is not possible if 2
Autonomous Systems 2007 - Pedro Lima, M. Isabel Ribeiro Cooperative Systems

Formation Control

GRASP Lab (Upenn) MARS project (http://www.cis.upenn.edu/group/mars/site/multimedia.htm#movies)

Autonomous Systems 2007 - Pedro Lima, M. Isabel Ribeiro Cooperative Systems

Formation Control
Loose Formations N. Leonard and co-workers [3]

Holonomic fully actuated robot kinematics

vehicle i omnidirectional vehicles

x i = vi v i = ui
vehicle i w.r.t. virtual leader l with velocity v0(t)

v il = ui " v 0
xij = xil x jl
Autonomous Systems 2007 - Pedro Lima, M. Isabel Ribeiro Cooperative Systems

Formation Control
Loose Formations N. Leonard and co-workers [3]

control force on vehicle i in a group of n vehicles and m virtual leaders

u i = xijVI ( x ij )
j i

k =0

xikVh ( xik ) + f vi
dissipative force
potential associated to nearby leader k, at a distance xik

potential associated to neighbour j ,at a distance xij

x ik u i = fi ( xij ) fh ( xik ) + f vi xij k =0 xik j i

Autonomous Systems 2007 - Pedro Lima, M. Isabel Ribeiro Cooperative Systems

xij

Formation Control
Loose Formations N. Leonard and co-workers [3]

Example of control force on vehicle j

Vehicles repel each other below distance d0 and attract each other between d0 and d1 Dont care after distance d1

Autonomous Systems

2007 - Pedro Lima, M. Isabel Ribeiro

Cooperative Systems

Formation Control
Loose Formations N. Leonard and co-workers [3]

holonomic
Autonomous Systems 2007 - Pedro Lima, M. Isabel Ribeiro

Non-holonomic
Cooperative Systems

Formation Control
Loose Formations of non-holonomic vehicles in the presence of obstacles P. Fazenda and P. Lima [4]

Stuck in local minimum

Autonomous Systems 2007 - Pedro Lima, M. Isabel Ribeiro

Escape from local min

Cooperative Systems

References
[1] R. Fierro, P. Song, A. Das, V. Kumar, Cooperative Control of Robot Formations, In R. Murphey and P. Pardalos, editors, Cooperative Control and Optimization, volume 66, pages 7393, Hingham, MA, 2002, Kluwer Academic Press. [2] A. K. Das, R. Fierro, V. Kumar, J. P. Ostrowski, J. Spletzer, and C. J. Taylor, A vision-based formation control framework , IEEE Trans. Robot. and Automat., vol. 18, no. 5, pp. 813--825, 2002. [3] N. E. Leonard, E. Fiorelli, Virtual Leaders, Artificial Potentials and Coordinated Control of Groups , Proc. of the 40th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, Orlando, FL, December 2001, 29682973 [4] P. Fazenda, P. Lima, Non-Holonomic Robot Formations with Obstacle Compliant Geometry, Proc. of IAV2007 - 6th IFAC Symposium on Intelligent Autonomous Vehicles, Toulouse, France, 2007

Autonomous Systems

2007 - Pedro Lima, M. Isabel Ribeiro

Cooperative Systems