Semi-autonomous control of robotic multi-agents

Abstract

The teleoperation systems involving cooperative multi-robots to cope with different tasks on a single target with a team of homogeneous robots have been developed with (1) modified potential field based leader-follower formation, (2) adaptive multi-robotic impedances, (3) compensation for contact forces. However, most of the homeland security applications, e.g. military reconnaissance, exploration, and etc, need a team of heterogeneous robots to work on the multi-task simultaneously on the multi-target with a robot-task-target pairing. Therefore, the main contribution of this paper is to propose the cooperative teleoperation control method integrating not only (1-3) but also the robot-task-target pairing for a multi-robot multi-task multi-target defensive application. The robot-task-target pairing is derived from the proven auction algorithm for multi-robot multi-task multi-target cases, which optimizes effects-based robot-task-target pairing based on a heuristic algorithm. The pairing method for the robot-task-target pairing is developed to produce a weighted attack guidance table (WAGT), which includes the benefits of assignments of robotic combinations (subteams) to tasks and targets. Therefore, the optimal robot-task-target pairs are computed based on WAGT with the heuristic algorithm. Simulation studies illustrate the efficacy of the teleoperation system with the proposed control method for multi-task multi-target scenarios. © 2013 Springer-Verlag.