Summary
We describe the architecture, algorithms, and experimental testbed for the deployment of large numbers of cooperating robots, and applications to tasks like manipulation and transportation. The coordination between robots is completely decentralized to enable scaling up to large numbers of robots. There is no labeling or identification of robots and all robots (and their software) are identical allowing robustness to failures, ease of programming, and modularity enabling the addition or deletion of robots from the team. Our approach requires minimal communication and sensing and the proposed controllers are based only on local information. Moreover, our architecture facilitates asymmetric communication from one or more supervisory agents that can broadcast information to all robots and close the loop by acquiring abstract, high level information related to the supervised robots. We discuss the hardware and software implementation, the architecture, and present recent experimental results.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Sukhatme, G.S., Dhariwal, A., Zhang, B., Oberg, C., Stauffer, B., Caron, D.A.: Design and development of a wireless robotic networked aquatic microbial observing system. Environmental Engineering Science 24(2), 205–215 (2007)
Rybski, P.E., Stoeter, S.A., Erickson, M.D., Gini, M., Hougen, D.F., Papanikolopoulos, N.: A team of robotic agents for surveillance. In: Proc. of Int. Conf. on Autonomous Agents, Barcelona, Spain, June 2000, pp. 9–16 (2000)
Howard, A., Parker, L.E., Sukhatme, G.S.: Experiments with a large heterogeneous mobile robot team: Exploration, mapping, deployment and detection. The Int. Journal of Robotics Research 25(5-6), 431–447 (2006)
Fox, D., Ko, J., Konolige, K., Limketkai, B., Schultz, D., Stewart, B.: Distributed multirobot exploration and mapping. Proc. of the IEEE 94(7), 1325–1339 (2006)
Corke, P., Peterson, R., Rus, D.: Networked Robots: Flying Robot Navigation using a Sensor Net. Springer Tracts in Advanced Robotics, vol. 15, pp. 234–243. Springer, New York (2005)
Kumar, V., Rus, D., Singh, S.: Robot and sensor networks for first responders. IEEE Pervasive Computing 3(4), 24–33 (2004)
Balch, T., Parker, L.E. (eds.): Robot Teams: From Diversity to Polymorphism. A K Peters, Ltd., Wellesley (2002)
Beard, R.W., Lawton, J., Hadaegh, F.Y.: A coordination architecture for spacecraft formation control. IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology 9(6), 777–790 (2001)
Parker, L.E.: Alliance: An architecture for fault tolerant multi-robot cooperation. IEEE Transactions on Robotics and Automation 14(2), 220–240 (1998)
Mackenzie, D.C., Arkin, R.C., Cameron, J.M.: Multiagent mission specification and execution. Autonomous Robots 4, 29–52 (1997)
Makarenko, A., Brooks, A., Williams, S., Durrant-Whyte, H., Grocholsky, B.: A decentralized architecture for active sensor networks. In: Proc. of the IEEE Int. Conf. on Robotics and Automation, New Orleans, LA, vol. 2, pp. 1097–1102 (2004)
Arkin, R.C.: Behavior Based Robotics. The MIT Press, Cambridge (1998)
Feddema, J.T., Schoenwald, D.: Decentralized control of cooperative robotic vehicles. In: Proc. of SPIE, vol. 4364, pp. 136–146 (September 2001)
Simmons, R.G., Singh, S., Hershberger, D., Ramos, J., Smith, T.: First Results in the Coordination of Heterogeneous Robots for Large-Scale Assembly. Lecture Notes in Control and Information Sciences, vol. 271, pp. 323–332. Springer, New York (2000)
Belta, C., Kumar, V.: Abstraction and control for groups of robots. IEEE Transactions on Robotics 20(5), 865–875 (2004)
Chaimowicz, L., Michael, N., Kumar, V.: Controlling swarms of robots using interpolated implicit functions. In: Proc. of the IEEE Int. Conf. on Robotics and Automation, Barcelona, Spain, April 2005, pp. 2487–2492 (2005)
Michael, N., Belta, C., Kumar, V.: Controlling three dimensional swarms of robots. In: Proc. of the IEEE Int. Conf. on Robotics and Automation, Orlando, FL, May 2006, pp. 964–969 (2006)
Julius, A., Halasz, A., Kumar, V., Pappas, G.J.: Finite state abstaction of a stochastic model of the lactose regulation system escherichia coli. In: Proc. of the IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, San Diego, CA, December 2006, pp. 19–24 (2006)
Koditschek, D.E., Rimon, E.: Robot navigation functions on manifolds with boundary. Advances in Applied Mathematics 11(4), 412–442 (1990)
Loizou, S.G., Kumar, V.: Weak input-to-state stability properties for navigation function based controllers. In: Proc. of the IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, San Diego, CA, pp. 6506–6511 (2006)
Loizou, S.G., Kumar, V.: Mixed initiative control of autonomous vehicles. In: Proc. of the IEEE Int. Conf. on Robotics and Automation, Rome, Italy, April 2007, pp. 1431–1436 (2007)
Gerkey, B.P., Vaughan, R.T., Howard, A.: The player/stage project: Tools for multi-robot and distributed sensor systems. In: Proc. of the Int. Conf. on Advanced Robotics, Coimbra, Portugal, June 2003, pp. 317–323 (2003)
Michael, N., Fink, J., Kumar, V.: Controlling a team of ground robots via an aerial robot. In: Proc. of the IEEE/RSJ Int. Conf. on Intelligent Robots and Systems, San Diego, CA, October 2007, pp. 965–970 (2007)
Fink, J., Michael, N., Kumar, V.: Composition of vector fields for multi-robot manipulation via caging. In: Robotics: Science and Systems, Atlanta, GA (June 2007)
Hsieh, M.A., Kumar, V.: Pattern generation with multiple robots. In: Proc. of the IEEE Int. Conf. on Robotics and Automation, Orlando, FL, May 2006, pp. 2442–2447 (2006)
Hsieh, M.A., Loizou, S.G., Kumar, V.: Stabilization of multiple robots on stable orbits via local sensing. In: Proc. of the IEEE Int. Conf. on Robotics and Automation, Rome, Italy, April 2007, pp. 2312–2317 (2007)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Michael, N., Fink, J., Loizou, S., Kumar, V. (2010). Architecture, Abstractions, and Algorithms for Controlling Large Teams of Robots: Experimental Testbed and Results. In: Kaneko, M., Nakamura, Y. (eds) Robotics Research. Springer Tracts in Advanced Robotics, vol 66. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-14743-2_34
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-14743-2_34
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-14742-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-14743-2
eBook Packages: EngineeringEngineering (R0)