Decentralized leader-follower control under high level goals without explicit communication

Abstract

In this paper, we study the decentralized control problem of a two-agent system under local goal specifications given as temporal logic formulas. The agents collaboratively carry an object in a leader-follower scheme and lack means to exchange messages on-line, i.e., to communicate explicitly. Specifically, we propose a decentralized control protocol and a leader re-election strategy that secure the accomplishment of both agents' local goal specifications. The challenge herein lies in exploiting exclusively implicit inter-robot communication that is a natural outcome of the physical interaction of the robots with the object. An illustrative experiment is included clarifying and verifying the approach.