(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2011-07-08)
Macdonald, Edward A.
Our research focuses on one of the more fundamental issues in multi-agent, mobile
robotics: the formation control problem. The idea is to create controllers that cause
robots to move into a predefined formation shape. This is a well studied problem for
the scenario in which the robots know in advance to which point in the formation they
are assigned. In our case, we assume this information is not given in advance, but must
be determined dynamically. This thesis presents an algorithm that can be used by
a network of mobile robots to simultaneously determine efficient robot assignments
and formation pose for rotationally and translationally invariant formations. This
allows simultaneous role assignment and formation sysnthesis without the need for
additional control laws.
The thesis begins by introducing some general concepts regarding multi-agent
robotics. Next, previous work and background information specific to the formation
control and assignment problems are reviewed. Then the proposed assignment al-
gorithm for role assignment and formation control is introduced and its theoretical
properties are examined. This is followed by a discussion of simulation results. Lastly,
experimental results are presented based on the implementation of the assignment al-
gorithm on actual robots.