Coordinated Motion: Modeling and Control for Mobile Robot Groups

The coordinated motion of a group of autonomous mobile robots has received significant research interest as well as avoiding the collisions in the group in the last decade. This book presents two novel approaches inclusive of a new collision avoidance scheme after framing the literature on the subject matter. Firstly, a method that introduces a virtual reference system consistent of virtual mass-spring-damper units, which in turn implies online collision-free trajectories. In the latter, online generation of reference trajectories for the robots is enabled in terms of their linear and angular velocities. The presented collision avoidance algorithm updates the velocities of the robots when a collision is predicted. Along with the presentation of several coordinated task examples, the proposed models are verified via simulations and experiments. As such, this book should help researchers in the field of multi-robot coordination and shed some light on the students interested in the subject.