Multi-robot system for tracking and surrounding a stationary target: A decentralized and cooperative approach

Abstract

Multi-Robot System (MRS) is composed of a group of robots that work cooperatively. This paper proposed a decentralized MRS for tracking and surrounding a stationary target. Currently, there are few studies related to a decentralized MRS, since most works are centralized. The robotic agents are homogeneous and hybrid with reactive and cognitive characteristics. The MRS has been implemented and validated in the robot simulator called Virtual Robot Experimentation Platform (V-Rep). In the validation, a scenario with three robots and a stationary target were defined. However, MRS is able to track and surround with n robots. In the tracking task, the robot can detect the target whose position is not known a priori. The obstacle avoidance should be considered in this task because robots and walls are obstacles and should be avoided. When the detection occurs, the V-Rep informs the target position to the robot because the environment is discretized into a grid of rectangular cells. After that, all the robots are directed to the target and the surround task is realized. In this task, a mathematical model with directs communication between the robots is defined to keep the robots equidistant therefrom and from each other.