(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2016-07)
Wang, Li; Ames, Aaron; Egerstedt, Magnus B.
This paper presents a formal framework for
collision avoidance in multi-robot systems, wherein an existing
controller is modified in a minimally invasive fashion to ensure
safety. We build this framework through the use of control
barrier functions (CBFs) which guarantee forward invariance
of a safe set; these yield safety barrier certificates in the
context of heterogeneous robot dynamics subject to acceleration
bounds. Moreover, safety barrier certificates are extended to
a distributed control framework, wherein neighboring agent
dynamics are unknown, through local parameter identification.
The end result is an optimization-based controller that formally
guarantees collision free behavior in heterogeneous multi-agent
systems by minimally modifying the desired controller via safety
barrier constraints. This formal result is verified in simulation
on a multi-robot system consisting of both “sluggish” and
“agile” robots.