PCMMC: Perception-Driven Coordinated Multi-Robot Motion Control

Abstract

Several robotic tasks require or benefit from the cooperation of multiple robots: transportation of large-size objects, large area coverage (e.g., for cleaning) or surveillance (e.g., for fire detection), pollutant plume tracking, or target detection and tracking, to name but a few.

In this project, we propose a novel active approach to cooperative perception through coordinated vehicle motion control. The vehicle formation geometry will change dynamically so as to optimize the accuracy of cooperative perception of a static or dynamic target by the formation vehicles. To achieve this, we will introduce innovative decentralized low-communication formation full state estimation methods, and dynamic-goal-driven formation control, for cooperative target localization and tracking by decentralized fusion of the data measured by all the formation vehicles.

We will also develop a novel embedded framework prototype to implement our contributions with low computational and power requirements, and test the proposed solutions in real robot scenarios, namely

• heterogeneous outdoor (aerial + land) vehicle formations, for extended decentralized perimeter surveillance and intruder tracking/event detection, in hostile environments with limited-range terrestrial communications (border control, forest fire detection or search and rescue operations);
• heterogeneous (non-holonomic and omnidirectional kinematics, different vision systems) soccer robots with a common target (tracking a ball), in a highly dynamic and adversarial environment, often subject to occlusions and “kidnappings”.

Real scenarios mean real wireless communications, plagued with link failures and limited bandwidth, and perception noise, often non-Gaussian, and subject to non-linear measurement and motion dynamic. Real robots and moving targets imply real-time requirements as well. We will also investigate methods that cope with all such constraints, namely reduced-dimension data representations (e.g., Gaussian Mixture Models), particle filter sampling of probability density functions, embedded frameworks that take into account power, communications and computational requirements, communications middleware to provide efficient use of the available resources, interoperability, heterogeneity abstractions, automatic re-configuration, and real-time communication protocols. Altogether we will explore simultaneously the complementary directions of coping with noisy perceptions and non-linear dynamics, as typically followed by the networked control community, while improving the communications quality and system lifetime, typically addressed by the real-time communications community, maximizing the improvement in the global system performance.

Resumo / Controlo Coordenado do Movimento de Multi-Robots Baseado na Percepção

News and Media

• Kickoff Meeting - IST, Lisboa, 27 Jan 2010
• Workshop at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid - 1st Progress Meeting, Leganés, 24 May 2010
• Work Meeting - ISEP/FEUP, Porto, 20-21 July 2010
• 2nd Progress Meeting - ISEP, Porto, 27-28 Sep 2010
• Work Meeting - IST, Lisboa, 29 November 2010
• 3rd Progress Meeting, INESC-TEC, Porto, 16 May 2011
• 4th Progress Meeting, ISEP, Porto, 16 June 2011
• Working Meeting to close the loop in real robots, between ISR/IST and INESC-TEC at ISR/IST, Lisboa, 2-8 August 2011
• 2nd Annual Meeting, ISR/IST, Lisboa, 26 January 2012
• Demo Meeting to show latest results in real robots to K. H. Johansson, at ISR/IST, Lisboa, 2-8 March 2012
• Demo Meeting to show latest results in real robots to M. Veloso, at ISEP, Porto, 5 October 2012

Partners

• Instituto Superior Técnico / Instituto de Sistemas e Robótica (IST/ISR - leader)
• Instituto de Engenharia de Sistemas e Computadores do Porto (INESC Porto)
• Instituto Superior de Engenharia do Porto / Instituto Politécnico do Porto (ISEP/IPP)

People

• IST/ISR:
  • Pedro Manuel Urbano de Almeida Lima
  • Matthijs Theodor Jan Spaan
  • João Vicente Teixeira de Sousa Messias
  • Aamir Ahmad

• INESC Porto:
  • António Paulo Gomes Mendes Moreira
  • Luis Miguel Pinho de Almeida
  • Tiago Nascimento
  • Luis Oliveira
  • Fernando Arménio da Costa Castro e Fo...
  • Paulo José Cerqueira Gomes da Costa
  • Amélia Cristina Duque Caldeira Matos
  • Dalila Benedita Machado Martins Fonte...

• ISEP/IPP
  • Eduardo Alexandre Pereira da Silva
  • Alfredo Manuel de Oliveira Martins
  • André Miguel Pinheiro Dias
  • Hugo Miguel Gomes da Silva
  • José Miguel Soares de Almeida

Reports

All reports here (requires password)

Publications

Theses

• T. P. Nascimento, "Coordinated Multi-Robot Formation Control", PPhD Thesis, Doctoral Program in Engenharia Electrotécnica e de Computadores of Faculdade de Engenharia da Universidade do Porto, Dec 2012 PDF
• A. Ahmad, "An Integrated Bayesian Approach to Multi-Robot Cooperative Perception", PhD Thesis - submitted for defense, Doctoral Program in Engenharia Electrotécnica e de Computadores of Instituto Superior Técnico, TU Lisbon, Mar 2013

Book Chapters

• Fontes, Dalila BMM, Fernando ACC Fontes, and Amélia CD Caldeira. "Optimal Formation Switching with Collision Avoidance and Allowing Variable Agent Velocities." Dynamics of Information Systems: Mathematical Foundations. Springer New York, 2012. 207-224 PDF

Journals

• T. P. Nascimento, A. P. Moreira, A. G. S. Conceição, A. Bonarini, “Intelligent state changing applied to multi-robot systems”, Robotics and Autonomous Systems, Volume 61, Issue 2, February 2013, Pages 115–124 (http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.robot.2012.10.011) PDF
• A. Ahmad, P. Lima, "Multi-Robot Cooperative Object Tracking in 3D Space Based on Particle Filters", accepted for publication, Robotics and Autonomous Systems, 2013

Conferences

• P. Lima, J. Santos, P. Santos, R. Oliveira, A. Ahmad, "Cooperative localization based on visually shared objects." RoboCup 2010: Robot Soccer World Cup XIV. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2011. 350-361 PDF
• T. P. Nascimento, A. G. S. Conceição, A. Paulo Moreira, "Omnidirectional Mobile Robots Multivariable Trajectory Tracking Control: a robustness analysis", Proc. of the 9th Portuguese Conference on Automatic Control, Controlo 2010, Coimbra, Portugal, Setembro de 2010, pp 63-68 PDF
• J. Rodrigo Ferreira, A. Paulo Moreira, "Non-Linear Model Predictive Controller for Trajectory of an Omni-Directional Robot Using a Simplified Model", Proc. of the 9th Portuguese Conference on Automatic Control, Controlo 2010, Coimbra, Portugal, Setembro de 2010, pp 57-62 PDF
• Luís Oliveira, Hongbin Li, Luis Almeida, "Experiments with navigation based on the RSS of wireless communication", Proceedings of ROBOTICA 2010 - 10th Conf. on Mobile Robots and Competitions, Leiria, Portugal, 24 March 2010. PDF
• Nascimento,T. P., Fontes, F. A., Moreira, A. P., Conceição, A. G. S., “Leader Following Formation Control for Omnidirectional Mobile Robots –The Target Chasing Problem”, ICINCO 2011, Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Informatics in Control, Automation and Robotics, pages135-144, Noordwijkerhout, The Netherlands, July 28 – 31, 2011, DOI: 10.5220/0003453701350144 PDF
• Oliveira, L., Almeida, L., Santos, F., “A Loose Synchronisation Protocol for Managing RF Ranging in Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks”, Proceedings of the RoboCup International Symposium 2011, İstanbul, Turkey, 2011 PDF
• Ahmad, A., Lima, P., “Multi-Robot Cooperative Object Tracking Based on Particle Filters”, Proceedings of the European Conference on Mobile Robots 2011 (ECMR 2011), Orebro, Sweden, 2011 PDF
• A. Dias , J.M. Almeida , A. Martins , E. Silva , "Real-Time Visual Ground-Truth System for Indoor Robotic Applications", IbPRIA2013 - 6th Iberian Conference on Pattern Recognition and Image Analysis, June 2013 PDF
• A. Dias, J. Almeida, P. Lima, E. Silva, “Multi-Robot Cooperative Stereo for Outdoor Scenarios”, Robotica 2013 - 13th International Conference on Autonomous Robot Systems, Abril 2013 PDF
• A. Martins, G. Amaral, A. Dias, C. Almeida, J. Almeida and E. Silva, “TIGRE - An autonomous ground robot for outdoor exploration”, Robotica 2013 - 13th International Conference on Autonomous Robot Systems, Abril 2013 PDF
• J. Logghe , A. Dias , J.M. Almeida , A. Martins , E. Silva , "Ball sensing in a leg like robotic kicker", RoboCup'2012 - 16th annual RoboCup International Symposium, June 2012 PDF
• T. P. Nascimento, A. G. S. Conceição, H. P. Alves, F. A. Fontes and A. P. Moreira, "A Generic Framework for Multi-robot Formation Control”, RoboCup 2011: Robot Soccer World Cup XV, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2012, Volume 7416/2012, 294-305, DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-32060-6 25 2012 PDF
• A. Ahmad, T. P. Nascimento, A. G. S. Conceição, A. P. Moreira, P. Lima, "Perception-Driven Multi-Robot Formation Control", accepted for publication, Proc. of ICRA 2013 - IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, Karlsruhe, Germany, 2013
• A. Ahmad, G. D. Tipaldi, P. Lima, W. Burgard, "Cooperative Robot Localization and Target Tracking based on Least Square Minimization", accepted for publication, Proc. of ICRA 2013 - IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, Karlsruhe, Germany, 2013

Links

• SocRob project
• Intelligent Robots and SystemsGroup at ISR/IST
• GroundSys group at FEUP
• Laboratório de Sistemas Autónomos do ISEP/IPP
• INESC-TEC ROBIS

Reference Information

Project Reference: PTDC/EEA-CRO/100692/2008
Start: January 2010
End: December 2012
Total budget: 199.123,00 EUR
Principal Investigator: Pedro U. Lima