A Method of Cooperative Control using Occasional non-local Interactions

— Current approaches to distributed control involving many robots generally restrict interactions to pairs of robots within a threshold distance. While this allows for provable stability, there are performance costs associated with the lack of long-distance information. We introduce the acute angle switching algorithm, which allows a small number of long-range interactions in addition to interactions with nearby neighbors, without sacrificing provable stability. We prove several formal properties of the acute angle switching algorithm, including system-wide connectivity. Further, we show simulation results demonstrating the efficacy and robustness of multi-robot systems based on the acute angle switching algorithm.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2006
• Where: ICRA
• Authors: Brian Shucker, Todd D. Murphey, John K. Bennett
• Keywords: Acute Angle, Angle Switching Algorithm, ICRA 2006, Provable Stability, Robotics