Distributed Control for Multi-Robot Interactive Swarming Using Voronoi Partioning

Abstract

The problem of safe navigation of a human-multi-robot system is addressed in this paper. More precisely, we propose a novel distributed algorithm to control a swarm of unmanned ground robots interacting with human operators in presence of obstacles. Contrary to many existing algorithms that consider formation control, the proposed approach results in non-rigid motion for the swarm, which more easily enables interactions with human operators and navigation in cluttered environments. Each vehicle calculates distributively and dynamically its own safety zone in which it generates a reference point to be tracked. The algorithm relies on purely geometric reasoning through the use of Voronoi partitioning and collision cones, which allows to naturally account for inter-robot, human-robot and robot-obstacle interactions. Different interaction modes have been defined from this common basis to address the following practical problems: autonomous waypoint navigation, velocity-guided motion, and follow a localized operator. The effectiveness of the algorithm is illustrated by outdoor and indoor field experiments.