Related papers: Leader Election Problem Versus Pattern Formation P…
We consider programmable matter that consists of computationally limited devices (called particles) that are able to self-organize in order to achieve some collective goal without the need for central control or external intervention. We…
Coordinated path following in multi-agent systems is a key challenge in robotics, with applications in automated logistics, surveillance, and collaborative exploration. Traditional formation control techniques often rely on…
This paper concerns designing distributed algorithms that are singularly optimal, i.e., algorithms that are simultaneously time and message optimal, for the fundamental leader election problem in networks. Our main result is a randomized…
This work addresses the coordination problem of multiple robots with the goal of finding specific hazardous targets in an unknown area and dealing with them cooperatively. The desired behaviour for the robotic system entails multiple…
The design of distributed gathering and convergence algorithms for tiny robots has recently received much attention. In particular, it has been shown that convergence problems can even be solved for very weak, \emph{oblivious} robots:…
Robot-assisted navigation is a perfect example of a class of applications requiring flexible control approaches. When the human is reliable, the robot should concede space to their initiative. When the human makes inappropriate choices the…
We study a search problem on capturing a moving target on an infinite real line. Two autonomous mobile robots (which can move with a maximum speed of 1) are initially placed at the origin, while an oblivious moving target is initially…
Frictional contact has been extensively studied as the core underlying behavior of legged locomotion and manipulation, and its nearly-discontinuous nature makes planning and control difficult even when an accurate model of the robot is…
This paper studies the tracking control problem for nonholonomic mobile robots based on second order dynamics, with application to consensus tracking and formation tracking. The greatest novelty in this paper is that the reference…
This paper introduces a distributed leaderless swarm formation control framework to address the problem of collectively driving a swarm of robots to track a time-varying formation. The swarm's formation is captured by the trajectory of an…
Studying distributed computing through the lens of algebraic topology has been the source of many significant breakthroughs during the last two decades, especially in the design of lower bounds or impossibility results for deterministic…
We consider a swarm of $n$ autonomous mobile robots, distributed on a 2-dimensional grid. A basic task for such a swarm is the gathering process: All robots have to gather at one (not predefined) place. A common local model for extremely…
A large body of compelling evidence has been accumulated demonstrating that embodiment - the agent's physical setup, including its shape, materials, sensors and actuators - is constitutive for any form of cognition and as a consequence,…
Our goal is to enable robots to express their incapability, and to do so in a way that communicates both what they are trying to accomplish and why they are unable to accomplish it. We frame this as a trajectory optimization problem:…
We consider leader election in anonymous radio networks modeled as simple undirected connected graphs. Nodes communicate in synchronous rounds. Nodes are anonymous and execute the same deterministic algorithm, so symmetry can be broken only…
Deep learning's success in perception, natural language processing, etc. inspires hopes for advancements in autonomous robotics. However, real-world robotics face challenges like variability, high-dimensional state spaces, non-linear…
Shared-autonomy imitation learning lets a human correct a robot in real time, mitigating covariate-shift errors. Yet existing approaches ignore two critical factors: (i) the operator's cognitive load and (ii) the risk created by delayed or…
[HHM20] discovered, for 7 pairs (C,D) of seemingly distinct standard electoral control types, that C and D are identical: For each input I and each election system, I is a Yes instance of both C and D, or of neither. Surprisingly this had…
The presentation of a robot's capability and identity directly influences a human collaborator's perception and implicit trust in the robot. Unlike humans, a physical robot can simultaneously present different identities and have them…
In the dispersion problem, a set of $k$ co-located mobile robots must relocate themselves in distinct nodes of an unknown network. The network is modeled as an anonymous graph $G=(V,E)$, where the nodes of the graph are not labeled. The…