Behavior coordination in multi-robot systems

Abstract

A distributed swarm navigation technique is presented for terrestrial mobile robots. Each robot has its own behavior-based controller that coordinates its basic behaviors by using a hybrid automata. The coordination allows flocking behavior as a result of parallel composition of individual robot automata. The distributed navigation problem is formulated for differential-drive wheeled robots equipped with odometry, compass, and laser range sensor. An interference analysis is made to evaluate the system performance under different configuration of initial parameters. The individual controller allows to expand the number of behaviors. This permits cohesion, align and safe navigation in the robot swarm. The pseudo-experimental results obtained in a ROS-GAZEBO environment were quite positive demonstrating the correctness and feasibility of the proposed solution.