An economical testbed for cooperative control and sensing strategies of robotic micro-vehicles

Abstract

Laboratory testbeds are an important part of the design of cooperative control algorithms. Sensor noise, communication delays, dropped packets, and network connectivity issues can all affect algorithm performance in different ways, and although these sources of error can be included in simulations, the degree of their effects is often not known until one attempts to implement the algorithm on real platforms. Moreover, by quantitatively assessing these constraints, one can propose new model problems of relevance to the design of these algorithms. The UCLA Applied Mathematics Laboratory is at the forefront of the development and testing of cost-efficient micro-vehicle testbeds. This work describes the third generation UCLA economical cooperative control testbed, and is an updated and expanded version of [1]. Here, we describe the setup of the testbed in detail, and demonstrate practical use of the testbed for algorithm validation by implementing cooperative steering and barrier avoidance algorithms. © 2013 Springer-Verlag.