CRII: RI: Distributed, Stable and Robust Topology Control: New Methods for Asymmetrically Interacting Multi-Robot Teams

近年来，自主机器人技术在研究和工业的关键领域迅速增长。然而，机器人团队的自主性在某种程度上仍处于初级阶段。因此，这个项目旨在消除目前限制多机器人团队自主控制的三个假设：(1)所有机器人在任何时候都可以获得完整的系统信息；(2)团队成员之间的机器人交互是对称的(即，我看到你和你看到我)；以及(3)机器人之间的交互提供了足够的信息，以保证机器人可预测和安全的运动。该项目将通过开发新的方法来解决这些限制，在不存在上述假设的情况下，明确控制机器人与机器人之间的交互，并使用商用现成的机器人和物联网(IoT)传感器平台在现场实验中进行验证。该项目成果将广泛应用于智能交通、精准农业、自主建筑和国防，同时允许在实验室外进行更深层次的实验。最后，该项目包括一个全面的推广计划，该计划包括：(1)未被充分代表的学生的K-12学术经验；(2)研究生课程；(3)对机器人社区的开源贡献。为了实现上述目标，该项目将结合控制和图论的新技术，为一类新的非对称拓扑控制律推导稳定性保证。这些理论方法将保证一大类分布式多机器人系统的协调。具体地说，这个项目将侧重于以下开发目标：(1)确保一类已确定的非对称机器人交互的多机器人稳定协调的非线性运动控制器；(2)用于确定非对称通信和传感拓扑中的稳定过渡的分布式算法；(3)扩展硬件安全控制输入和对外部干扰的鲁棒性；以及(4)空中和地面机器人的现场实验，以及目标跟踪系统中的物联网传感器网络。

Recent years have seen a rapid increase of autonomous robotics in critical segments of research and industry. However, autonomy in teams of robots remains somewhat in its infancy. This project therefore aims to eliminate three assumptions that currently limit the autonomous control of multi-robot teams: (1) that complete system information is available to all robots at all times; (2) that robot-to-robot interactions are symmetric among team members (i.e., I see you and you see me); and (3) that interactions among robots provide enough information to guarantee predictable and safe robot motion. This project will tackle such restrictions by developing new methods for explicitly controlling robot-to-robot interaction when the above assumptions are absent, with validation in field experiments using commercial off-the-shelf robotic and Internet of Things (IoT) sensor platforms. The project outcomes will find broad relevance in applications spanning intelligent transportation, precision agriculture, autonomous construction, and defense, while allowing for deeper experimentation outside of laboratories. Finally, the project includes a comprehensive outreach plan consisting of: (1) K-12 academic experiences for underrepresented students; (2) graduate curriculum; and (3) open-source contributions to the robotics community.Towards the above goals, this project will intersect novel techniques from control and graph theory to derive stability guarantees for a new class of asymmetric topology control laws. The theoretical approaches will enable guaranteed coordination for a large class of distributed multi-robot systems. Specifically, this project will focus on the following objectives of developing: (1) nonlinear motion controllers that guarantee stable multi-robot coordination for an identified class of asymmetric robot interactions; (2) distributed algorithms for determining stable transitions in asymmetric communication and sensing topologies; (3) extensions for hardware safe control inputs and robustness to external disturbance; and (4) field experiments with aerial and ground robots, and an IoT sensor network in a target tracking regime.