TY - GEN

T1 - Decentralized multi-agent tracking of unknown environmental level sets by a team of nonholonomic robots

AU - Ovchinnikov, Kirill

AU - Semakova, Anna

AU - Matveev, Alexey

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 2014 IEEE. Copyright: Copyright 2019 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.

PY - 2014

Y1 - 2014

N2 - We consider a team of nonholonomic Dubins-car like robots traveling forward over paths with bounded curvatures in a planar region supporting an unknown scalar field. Every robot measures the field value at its location and has no communication facilities; the robots are anonymous to one another. The objective is to detect and localize the level set where the unknown field assumes a given value. We present a new distributed navigation and guidance strategy that ensures convergence of all robots to the desired level set and its subsequent display via stable circulation of the robots along this set. Moreover, this strategy prevents collisions between the robots and ultimately provides their sub-uniform distribution over the level set, so that the entire team effectively and representatively portrays this set. The proposed control strategy does not employ gradient estimation, which typically needs ineffective concentration of robots into tight clusters, and is non-demanding with respect to both computation and motion. Its mathematically rigorous justification is provided. The effectiveness of the proposed guidance law is confirmed by computer simulations and real-world experiments.

AB - We consider a team of nonholonomic Dubins-car like robots traveling forward over paths with bounded curvatures in a planar region supporting an unknown scalar field. Every robot measures the field value at its location and has no communication facilities; the robots are anonymous to one another. The objective is to detect and localize the level set where the unknown field assumes a given value. We present a new distributed navigation and guidance strategy that ensures convergence of all robots to the desired level set and its subsequent display via stable circulation of the robots along this set. Moreover, this strategy prevents collisions between the robots and ultimately provides their sub-uniform distribution over the level set, so that the entire team effectively and representatively portrays this set. The proposed control strategy does not employ gradient estimation, which typically needs ineffective concentration of robots into tight clusters, and is non-demanding with respect to both computation and motion. Its mathematically rigorous justification is provided. The effectiveness of the proposed guidance law is confirmed by computer simulations and real-world experiments.

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85011659390&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1109/ICUMT.2014.7002127

DO - 10.1109/ICUMT.2014.7002127

M3 - Conference contribution

T3 - International Congress on Ultra Modern Telecommunications and Control Systems and Workshops

SP - 352

EP - 359

BT - 2014 6th International Congress on Ultra Modern Telecommunications and Control Systems and Workshops, ICUMT 2014

PB - Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.

T2 - 2014 6th International Congress on Ultra Modern Telecommunications and Control Systems and Workshops, ICUMT 2014

Y2 - 6 October 2014 through 8 October 2014

ER -