Automatic Synthesis and Optimization of Controllers for Multi-Robot Coordination

该项目的目标是为隐式多机器人协调机构的综合和分析开发一个正式的基础。这种正式的理解将允许多机器人社区从特别解决方案转向协调多机器人系统的原则性设计和分析。这将通过引入形式化语言来描述协调多机器人系统中交互的实体来实现，并将该框架应用于使用基于逻辑的归纳的机器人控制器的原则性综合。同时，该项目将开发一种方法来建立机器人-环境耦合系统的模型，并推导出描述系统动力学的方程。最后，这些程序将被组合在一起，这样分析结果就可以用于驱动机器人控制器中的性能增强修改。为了验证所提出的研究的形式化概念，这些方法将被应用于针对真实世界的传感器/执行器网络部署和维护任务的多机器人协调方法的设计和分析。这项拟议的研究是新颖的，因为它结合了计算机科学、数学和物理学的形式技术。因此，这项工作将成为提高数学分析在机器人社区中地位的工具。本科生和研究生的机器人课程将受益于所开发的形式分析技术。此外，每年将在当地高中举行两次示威活动，向学生传授集体行为的概念，并教会他们更好地理解和处理复杂问题的技能。

The goal of the project is to develop a formal foundation for the synthesis and analysis of implicit multi-robot coordination mechanisms. Such a formal understanding will allow the multi-robot community to move away from ad-hoc solutions and toward the principled design and analysis of coordinated multi-robot systems. This will be achieved by introducing a formal language to describe the entities interacting in a coordinated multi-robot system, and apply this framework to the principled synthesis of robot controllers using logic-based induction. At the same time, this project will develop a methodology for modeling the coupled robot-environment system and derive the equations describing dynamics of the system. Finally, these procedures will be combined, so that results of analysis can be used to drive performance-enhancing modifications in the robot controller. To validate the formal concepts of the proposed research, these methods will be applied to the design and analysis of multi-robot coordination methods for a real-world sensor/actuator network deployment and maintenance task. The proposed research is novel in that it combines formal techniques from Computer Science, Mathematics, and Physics. As such, the work will serve as a vehicle for raising the profile of mathematical analysis in the robotics community. Undergraduate and graduate robotics courses will benefit from the inclusion of the developed formal analysis techniques. In addition, twice a year demonstrations will be given at local high schools to teach the students the concepts of collective behavior and give them the skills to better understand and approach complex problems.