Semi-Autonomous Collaborative Control of Multi-Robotic Systems for Multi-Task Multi-Target Pairing

Abstract

In many applications, it is required that heterogeneous multi-robots are grouped to work on multi-targets simultaneously. Therefore, this paper proposes a control method for a single-master multi-slave (SMMS) teleoperator to cooperatively control a team of mobile robots for a multi-target mission. The major components of the proposed control method are the compensation for contact forces, modified potential field based leader-follower formation, and robot-task-target pairing method. The robot-task-target paring method is derived from the proven auction algorithm for a single target and is extended for multi-robot multi-target cases, which optimizes effect-based robot-task-target pairs based on heuristic and sensory data. The robot-task-target pairing method can produce a weighted attack guidance table (WAGT), which contains benefits of different robot-task-target pairs. With the robot-task-target pairing method, subteams are formed by paired robots. The subteams perform their own paired tasks on assigned targets in the modified potential field based leader-follower formation while avoiding sensed obstacles. Simulation studies illustrate system efficacy with the proposed control method.