Multi-robot energy autonomy with wind and constrained resources

TL;DR

This paper presents a control framework for multi-robot systems that ensures energy sufficiency and coordinated charging under wind and air drag effects, enabling long-term autonomy with limited charging stations.

Contribution

It extends previous work by incorporating wind and air drag effects into a control barrier function-based framework for multi-robot energy management.

Findings

The framework guarantees energy sufficiency and exclusive charging access.

Simulation results validate the effectiveness of the control approach.

Feasibility conditions depend on robot properties and environmental factors.

Abstract

One aspect of the ever-growing need for long term autonomy of multi-robot systems, is ensuring energy sufficiency. In particular, in scenarios where charging facilities are limited, battery-powered robots need to coordinate to share access. In this work we extend previous results by considering robots that carry out a generic mission while sharing a single charging station, while being affected by air drag and wind fields. Our mission-agnostic framework based on control barrier functions (CBFs) ensures energy sufficiency (i.e., maintaining all robots above a certain voltage threshold) and proper coordination (i.e., ensuring mutually exclusive use of the available charging station). Moreover, we investigate the feasibility requirements of the system in relation to individual robots' properties, as well as air drag and wind effects. We show simulation results that demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed framework.