Awareness Coverage Control in Unknown Environments Using Heterogeneous Multi‐Robot Systems

摘要

This chapter proposes a novel distributed control strategy for heterogeneous multi-robot systems to accomplish full awareness coverage of unknown environments. Heterogeneous multi-robot systems composed of complementary types of robots offers great flexibility and capabilities over homogeneous systems in performing complex tasks. However, heterogeneity in multi-robot teams introduces a particular challenge to efficiently coordinate the different capabilities of the robots. The use of heterogeneous multi-robot systems contributes to higher efficiency and improved task performance. In the chapter, the authors model wheeled mobile robots (WMRs) with nonholonomic constraints and nonisotropic sensors. The nonholonomic constraints of WMR, nonisotropic sensor model, and awareness-based error metrics are considered when deriving motion control strategies. Distributed motion control strategies for both the boundary-tracking unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and the ground coverage WMRs are developed to collaboratively achieve full awareness of the unknown task domain.