Decentralized Radial Segregation in Heterogeneous Swarms of Robots

Abstract

This article proposes a decentralized control strategy to reach radial segregation in heterogeneous robot swarms. The approach is based on a consensus algorithm applied to virtual points attached to each robot and a heuristics to compute the distance between the robots and the virtual point. Two scenarios are considered: when robots have access to a global reference point and when robots can communicate through a fixed underlying topology. A convergence proof is presented. Simulations and experimental results show that our approach allows a swarm of multiple heterogeneous robots to segregate radially using local information.