Fragile object transportation by a multi-robot system in an unknown environment using a semi-decentralized control approach

TL;DR

This paper presents a semi-decentralized control method for multi-robot systems to transport fragile objects in unknown environments, combining centralized formation creation with decentralized object conveyance.

Contribution

It introduces a novel two-phase control approach using triangle packing and region-based shape control for fragile object transportation in uncertain environments.

Findings

Effective formation control using triangle packing scheme.

Successful decentralized object transportation in simulations.

Comparison shows improved robustness over existing methods.

Abstract

In this paper, we introduce a semi-decentralized control technique for a swarm of robots transporting a fragile object to a destination in an uncertain occluded environment.The proposed approach has been split into two parts. The initial part (Phase 1) includes a centralized control strategy for creating a specific formation among the agents so that the object to be transported, can be positioned properly on the top of the system. We present a novel triangle packing scheme fused with a circular region-based shape control method for creating a rigid configuration among the robots. In the later part (Phase 2), the swarm system is required to convey the object to the destination in a decentralized way employing the region based shape control approach. The simulation result as well as the comparison study demonstrates the effectiveness of our proposed scheme.