Event-based Reconfiguration Control for Time-varying Formation of Robot Swarms in Narrow Spaces

TL;DR

This paper introduces an event-based control method enabling robot swarms to navigate narrow environments effectively, maintaining formation and avoiding collisions, with proven stability and superior performance in simulations.

Contribution

It presents a novel event-based reconfiguration control framework for robot swarms in narrow spaces, incorporating artificial potential fields and Lyapunov stability analysis.

Findings

Successfully navigates narrow spaces in simulations

Outperforms existing methods in key metrics

Validated with software-in-the-loop tests

Abstract

This study proposes an event-based reconfiguration control to navigate a robot swarm through challenging environments with narrow passages such as valleys, tunnels, and corridors. The robot swarm is modeled as an undirected graph, where each node represents a robot capable of collecting real-time data on the environment and the states of other robots in the formation. This data serves as the input for the controller to provide dynamic adjustments between the desired and straight-line configurations. The controller incorporates a set of behaviors, designed using artificial potential fields, to meet the requirements of goal-oriented motion, formation maintenance, tailgating, and collision avoidance. The stability of the formation control is guaranteed via the Lyapunov theorem. Simulation and comparison results show that the proposed controller not only successfully navigates the robot swarm through narrow spaces but also outperforms other established methods in key metrics including the success rate, heading order, speed, travel time, and energy efficiency. Software-in-the-loop tests have also been conducted to validate the controller's applicability in practical scenarios. The source code of the controller is available at https://github.com/duynamrcv/erc.