PCMMC: Perception-Driven Coordinated Multi-Robot Motion Control

From ISRWiki
Jump to navigation Jump to search

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

Partners

People

  • INESC Porto:
    • António Paulo Gomes Mendes Moreira
    • Luis Miguel Pinho de Almeida
    • 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

  • P. Lima, J. Santos, P. Santos, R. Oliveira, A. Ahmad, "Cooperative Localization Based on Visually Shared Objects", Proc. of RoboCup2010 Symposium, Singapore, 2010
  • 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
  • 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
  • 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.
  • Dalila B.M.M. Fontes, Fernando A.C.C. Fontes and Amélia Caldeira. "Optimal Formation Switching with Collision Avoidance and Allowing Variable Agent Velocities. In Dynamics of Information Systems. Alexey Sorokin, My T. Thai, Panos M. Pardalos editors. Springer Proceedings in Mathematics (accepted for publication, June 2011
  • Nascimento,T. P., Conceição, A. G. S., Alves , H. P., Fontes, F. A. and Moreira, A. P., “A Generic Framework for Multi-Robot Formation Control”, Proceedings of the RoboCup International Symposium 2011, pp. 217-228, July 5-11, 2011, İstanbul, Turkey 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

Links

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
Retrieved from "http://mediawiki.isr.tecnico.ulisboa.pt/index.php?title=PCMMC:_Perception-Driven_Coordinated_Multi-Robot_Motion_Control&oldid=4672"