Evaluation of robot swarm control methods for underwater mine countermeasures

Abstract

This paper involves the synthesis of a swarm controller that is suitable for coordinating movements of a group of autonomous robotic vehicles performing underwater mine countermeasures (UMCM). The main objective of this research is to combine behavior-based robot control methods with systems-theoretic swarm control techniques to achieve a hybrid that has the best characteristics of both. Behavior-based robotic theories are combined with statistical methods to give rise to a robust form of control for robots performing UMCM. This highly reactive and responsive system demonstrates an elegant solution for UMCM through simulation and experiments.