DOI

Controlling a robot swarm with a single remote controller is a challenging task, especially under unstable communication conditions where agents can temporarily lose the control signal, necessitating robust decentralized mechanisms for formation maintenance. This paper presents and tests a semi-centralized control system that enables an operator to coordinate the entire swarm as a unified entity. The system integrates centralized commands from a base station with decentralized position correction via the ESP-NOW protocol. To compare performance in maintaining a rigid formation, the Local Voting Protocol (LVP) and its Accelerated version (ALVP) were applied. Their effectiveness was evaluated in a simulation environment with a group of four drones through experiments involving sharp maneuvers (50° and 75° turns) and significant data packet loss simulations (50% and 80%). The results demonstrate that the Accelerated Local Voting Protocol (ALVP) offers significant advantages over the standard LVP, including faster formation recovery, lower mean positioning error, and greater stability. Specifically, in a series of 20 flight tests with a 50° turn, ALVP successfully maintained the formation in 17 cases, compared to only 3 for LVP, and also showed superior robustness under packet loss conditions. Therefore, the proposed semi-centralized approach using the ALVP protocol is an effective and robust solution for swarm formation control. Future work will focus on conducting physical experiments and integrating obstacle avoidance mechanisms.
Translated title of the contributionAccelerated Local Voting Protocol for Single Remote Controller Robot Swarm System
Original languageRussian
Pages (from-to)1029-1058
JournalТруды СПИИРАН
Volume24
Issue number4
DOIs
StatePublished - 19 Aug 2025

    Research areas

  • cooperative control, adaptive control, robotics

ID: 145032796