群体机器人系统是集通信、计算、优化等技术于一身的分布式非线性网络化系统。群体中每个机器人可视为群体中的一个节点，其与邻近的机器人通过通信网络进行信息交互，共同完成特定任务。群机器人系统具有不同于传统系统的新特点：非线性、强耦合、分布式、网络化。这些特点使得针对传统系统开发出来的故障诊断与容错控制的理论与方法在群体机器人系统中不再适用。本项目主要研究一类群体自主机器人的故障诊断与容错控制问题，综合考虑因通信介质的引入而带来的测量信息不完备现象，构造合理的分布式故障诊断与容错控制方案，有效地降低其他个体上的故障源通过网络对本个体造成的影响；并快速、准确地定位故障、解决故障；从定量的角度揭示通信受限对故障诊断的灵敏性和容错控制的可靠性所带来的影响。本课题的研究成果将在清华大学故障诊断实验室中进行实验验证，本项目不仅具有重要的理论意义，对提高群机器人系统的可靠性还具有应用价值。

The past decade has witnessed a tremendous upsurge in the research interest towards modeling, analysis and applications of autonomous swarm robotics from a variety of research communities. So far, existing emerging technologies have largely overlooked the safety issues despite the fact that faults and failures inevitably occur in the communication and control loops with possibly disastrous consequences. In this proposed project, we identify a number of safety challenges for swarm robotics. We believe that it is of both theoretical importance and practical significance to address these timely issues and seek novel solutions in order to prevent undesirable consequences. In particular, we aim to 1) explore the fundamental relationships between communication capacity and fault detectability of the autonomous robot swarm under communication networks; 2) investigate the fault detection problem for incipient faults of the autonomous robot swarm; 3) establish the fault detection strategy for the closed-loop autonomous robot swarm; 4) develop robust yet fast fault-tolerant control techniques in the coordination of the autonomous robot swarm; and 5) conduct real-time experiments to test the safety issues in the coordination for exploration, navigation and task formation of the autonomous robot swarm.