Unifying Control Architecture for Reactive Particle Swarms

Abstract

Swarm control strategies allow for decentralized control of many simple robots to perform collective behaviors based on local interactions. Despite the broad applications of swarm robotics, there lacks a generalized and unified set of control equations for swarms. First, this work presents a novel mathematical control law for decentralized velocity control of planar, homogeneous swarms called reactive particle swarms (RPS). The architecture unifies the development of new RPS behaviors. The weighted summation of simple base behaviors and external command inputs form complex composite behaviors. Second, a series of simulated and on-hardware case studies demonstrate the utility and flexibility of the architecture. Third, this work establishes a library of verified RPS base behaviors.