Related papers: Shepherding Heterogeneous Flocks: Overview and Pro…
For a multi-robot system equipped with heterogeneous capabilities, this paper presents a mechanism to allocate robots to tasks in a resilient manner when anomalous environmental conditions such as weather events or adversarial attacks…
In a setting where heterogeneous agents interact to accomplish a given set of goals, cooperation is of utmost importance, especially when agents cannot achieve their individual goals by exclusive use of their own efforts. Even when we…
In this study, we explore the application of game theory, in particular Stackelberg games, to address the issue of effective coordination strategy generation for heterogeneous robots with one-way communication. To that end, focusing on the…
One of the major challenges in the coordination of large, open, collaborative, and commercial vehicle fleets is dynamic task allocation. Self-concerned individually rational vehicle drivers have both local and global objectives, which…
This paper investigates the flocking control of a swarm with a malicious agent that falsifies its controller parameters to cause collision, division, and escape of agents in the swarm. A novel geometric flocking condition is established by…
One of the most striking phenomena in biological systems is the tendency for biological agents to spatially aggregate, and subsequently display further collective behaviours such as rotational motion. One prominent explanation for why…
In operations of multi-agent teams ranging from homogeneous robot swarms to heterogeneous human-autonomy teams, unexpected events might occur. While efficiency of operation for multi-agent task allocation problems is the primary objective,…
In this work, Global Position System (GPS) data from a flock of homing pigeons are analysed. The flocking behaviour of the considered homing pigeons is formulated as a swarm optimal trajectory tracking control problem. The swarm problem in…
The flock-guidance problem enjoys a challenging structure where multiple optimization objectives are solved simultaneously. This usually necessitates different control approaches to tackle various objectives, such as guidance, collision…
The purpose of this review paper is to present some recent results on the modeling and control of large systems of agents. We focus on particular applications where the agents are capable of independent actions instead of simply reacting to…
In this paper, we present an original set of flocking rules using an ecologically-inspired paradigm for control of multi-robot systems. We translate these rules into a constraint-driven optimal control problem where the agents minimize…
We propose a model predictive control (MPC) based approach to a flock control problem with obstacle avoidance capability in a leader-follower framework, utilizing the future trajectory prediction computed by each agent. We employ the…
A significant element of human cooperative intelligence lies in our ability to identify opportunities for fruitful collaboration; and conversely to recognise when the task at hand is better pursued alone. Research on flexible cooperation in…
The multi-agent patrol problem refers to repeatedly visiting different locations in an environment using multiple autonomous agents. For over two decades, researchers have studied this problem in various settings. While providing valuable…
Currently, the general aim of flocking and formation control laws for multi-agent systems is to form and maintain a rigid configuration, such as, the alpha-lattices in flocking control methods, where the desired distance between each pair…
A distributed cooperative control law for persistent coverage tasks is proposed, capable of coordinating a team of heterogeneous agents in a structured environment. Team heterogeneity is considered both at vehicles' dynamics and at coverage…
In the context of search and rescue, we consider the problem of mission planning for heterogeneous teams that can include human, robotic, and animal agents. The problem is tackled using a mixed integer mathematical programming formulation…
Multi-robot systems performing continuous tasks face a performance trade-off when interrupted by urgent, time-critical sub-tasks. We investigate this trade-off in a scenario where a team must balance area patrolling with locating an…
Consider a dynamic task allocation problem, where tasks are unknowingly distributed over an environment. This paper considers each task comprised of two sequential subtasks: detection and completion, where each subtask can only be carried…
This paper introduces the Shepherd Test, a new conceptual test for assessing the moral and relational dimensions of superintelligent artificial agents. The test is inspired by human interactions with animals, where ethical considerations…