Related papers: Decentralized Control of Large Collaborative Swarm…
Different from most of the formation strategies where robots require unique labels to identify topological neighbors to satisfy the predefined shape constraints, we here study the problem of identity-less distributed shape formation in…
In collective systems, the available agents are a limited resource that must be allocated among tasks to maximize collective performance. Computing the optimal allocation of several agents to numerous tasks through a brute-force approach…
In this work, we present preliminary work on a novel method for Human-Swarm Interaction (HSI) that can be used to change the macroscopic behavior of a swarm of robots with decentralized sensing and control. By integrating a small yet…
Controlling a team of robots in a coordinated manner is challenging because centralized approaches (where all computation is performed on a central machine) scale poorly, and globally referenced external localization systems may not always…
We investigate the application of a multi-objective genetic algorithm to the problem of task allocation in a self-organizing, decentralized, threshold-based swarm. Each agent in our system is capable of performing four tasks with a response…
We consider the problem of controlling the group behavior of a large number of dynamic systems that are constantly interacting with each other. These systems are assumed to have identical dynamics (e.g., birds flock, robot swarm) and their…
Recently, deep reinforcement learning (RL) methods have been applied successfully to multi-agent scenarios. Typically, these methods rely on a concatenation of agent states to represent the information content required for decentralized…
This chapter provides a comprehensive overview of controlling collective behavior in complex systems comprising large ensembles of interacting dynamical agents. Building upon traditional control theory's foundation in individual systems, we…
Coordinated operations of multi-robot systems (MRS) require agents to maintain communication connections to accomplish team objectives. However, maintaining the connections imposes costs in terms of restricted robot mobility, resulting in…
Collective decision-making is a key function of autonomous robot swarms, enabling them to reach a consensus on actions based on environmental features. Existing strategies require the participation of all robots in the decision-making…
This paper introduces a safety-critical optimization-based control strategy that leverages control Lyapunov and control barrier functions to guide the spatial density of robotic swarms governed by the Fokker-Planck equation to a predefined…
We present a framework combining hierarchical and multi-agent deep reinforcement learning approaches to solve coordination problems among a multitude of agents using a semi-decentralized model. The framework extends the multi-agent learning…
Swarm robotics explores the coordination of multiple robots to achieve collective goals, with collective decision-making being a central focus. This process involves decentralized robots autonomously making local decisions and communicating…
Animal swarms displaying a variety of typical flocking patterns would not exist without underlying safe, optimal and stable dynamics of the individuals. The emergence of these universal patterns can be efficiently reconstructed with…
We introduce a novel distributed sampled-data control method tailored for heterogeneous multi-agent systems under a global spatio-temporal task with acyclic dependencies. Specifically, we consider the global task as a conjunction of…
Representation of a swarm of independent robotic agents under graph-theoretic constructs allows for more formal analysis of convergence properties. We consider the local and global convergence behavior of an N-member swarm of agents in a…
We review a body of recent work by the author and collaborators on controlling the spatial organisation of large agent populations across multiple scales. A central theme is the systematic bridging of microscopic agent-level dynamics and…
A swarm robotic system consists of a team of robots performing cooperative tasks without any centralized coordination. In principle, swarms enable flexible and scalable solutions; however, designing individual control algorithms that can…
This paper is concerned with the problem of controlling a system of constrained dynamic subsystems in a way that balances the performance degradation of decentralized control with the practical cost of centralized control. We propose a…
In many robotics problems, there is a significant gain in collaborative information sharing between multiple robots, for exploration, search and rescue, tracking multiple targets, or mapping large environments. One of the key implicit…