A control allocation approach for energetic swarm control

Abstract

In this paper, a control allocation approach is developed for energetic swarm control. This new approach allows sliding control of swarm temperature, swarm center position, and swarm potential energy. Since the sliding control problem is highly over-actuated, a control allocation optimization problem can be formulated and solved including input saturation constraints. Application to a group of wheeled mobile robots is used to demonstrate the approach. For this class of systems, a low level trajectory controller based on dynamic feedback linearization is developed in order to improve the trajectory tracking performance of the individual swarm members. Together, these results allow energetic swarm controllers to be developed and applied for mobile robot systems with uncertainty and input saturation constraints.