Hybrid control of reconfigurable robot formations

Abstract

In this paper, we present a framework to dynamically reconfigure a team of autonomous robots. Reconfiguration means that a team of vehicles is capable of reaching and maintaining a desired formation while following a prescribed trajectory. We described the dynamic reconfiguration problem as a hybrid system; that is, a coordinator assigns controllers to the multi-robot system. Additionally, we formulate the assignment of controllers for the N-robot team as a graph optimization problem. Numerical simulations demonstrate the validity of our approach.