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Related papers: Robotic Shepherding in Cluttered and Unknown Envir…

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Robotic shepherding is a bio-inspired approach to autonomously guiding a swarm of agents towards a desired location. The research area has earned increasing research interest recently due to the efficacy of controlling a large number of…

Robotics · Computer Science 2025-11-18 Jing Liu , Hemant Singh , Saber Elsayed , Robert Hunjet , Hussein Abbass

Robotic shepherding problem considers the control and navigation of a group of coherent agents (e.g., a flock of bird or a fleet of drones) through the motion of an external robot, called shepherd. Machine learning based methods have…

Robotics · Computer Science 2020-05-20 Jixuan Zhi , Jyh-Ming Lien

In this paper, we consider the problem of protecting a high-value area from being breached by sheep agents by crafting motions for dog robots. We use control barrier functions to pose constraints on the dogs' velocities that induce…

Robotics · Computer Science 2023-03-07 Nishant Mohanty , Jaskaran Grover , Changliu Liu , Katia Sycara

Shepherding involves herding a swarm of agents (\emph{sheep}) by another a control agent (\emph{sheepdog}) towards a goal. Multiple approaches have been documented in the literature to model this behaviour. In this paper, we present a…

This paper investigates decentralized shepherding in cluttered environments, where a limited number of herders must guide a larger group of non-cohesive, diffusive targets toward a goal region in the presence of static obstacles. A…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-11-27 Cristiana Punzo , Italo Napolitano , Cinzia Tomaselli , Mario di Bernardo

Designing safety-critical control for robotic manipulators is challenging, especially in a cluttered environment. First, the actual trajectory of a manipulator might deviate from the planned one due to the complex collision environments and…

Robotics · Computer Science 2022-11-14 Xuda Ding , Han Wang , Yi Ren , Yu Zheng , Cailian Chen , Jianping He

The shepherding problem refers to guiding a group of agents (called sheep) to a specific destination using an external agent with repulsive forces (called shepherd). Although various movement algorithms for the shepherd have been explored…

Adaptation and Self-Organizing Systems · Physics 2023-06-22 Yaosheng Deng , Aiyi Li , Masaki Ogura , Naoki Wakamiya

In this paper, we consider the problem of protecting a high-value unit from inadvertent attack by a group of agents using defending robots. Specifically, we develop a control strategy for the defending agents that we call "dog robots" to…

Robotics · Computer Science 2022-04-26 Jaskaran Grover , Nishant Mohanty , Wenhao Luo , Changliu Liu , Katia Sycara

We propose a novel cooperative herding strategy through backstepping control barrier functions (CBFs), which coordinates multiple herders to herd a group of evaders safely towards a designated goal region. For the herding system with…

Multiagent Systems · Computer Science 2025-07-15 Kang Li , Ming Li , Wenkang Ji , Zhiyong Sun , Shiyu Zhao

The simultaneous control of multiple coordinated robotic agents represents an elaborate problem. If solved, however, the interaction between the agents can lead to solutions to sophisticated problems. The concept of swarming, inspired by…

Robotics · Computer Science 2025-08-13 Nathan K Long , Karl Sammut , Daniel Sgarioto , Matthew Garratt , Hussein Abbass

Efficient exploration of large-scale environments remains a critical challenge in robotics, with applications ranging from environmental monitoring to search and rescue operations. This article proposes Frontier Shepherding (FroShe), a…

Robotics · Computer Science 2025-12-08 John Lewis , Meysam Basiri , Pedro U. Lima

We apply genetic programming techniques to the `shepherding' problem, in which a group of one type of animal (sheep dogs) attempts to control the movements of a second group of animals (sheep) obeying flocking behavior. Our genetic…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2016-03-22 Joshua Brulé , Kevin Engel , Nick Fung , Isaac Julien

Multi-robot flocking possesses extraordinary advantages over a single-robot system in diverse domains, but it is challenging to ensure safe and optimal performance in congested environments. Hence, this paper is focused on the investigation…

Robotics · Computer Science 2024-07-10 Guobin Zhu , Qingrui Zhang , Bo Zhu , Tianjiang Hu

Obstacle avoidance is central to safe navigation, especially for robots with arbitrary and nonconvex geometries operating in cluttered environments. Existing Control Barrier Function (CBF) approaches often rely on analytic clearance…

Robotics · Computer Science 2025-09-22 Shuo Liu , Zhe Huang , Calin A. Belta

Implementing obstacle avoidance in dynamic environments is a challenging problem for robots. Model predictive control (MPC) is a popular strategy for dealing with this type of problem, and recent work mainly uses control barrier function…

Robotics · Computer Science 2024-04-10 Zetao Lu , Kaijun Feng , Jun Xu , Haoyao Chen , Yunjiang Lou

Designing systems for autonomous transport of groups of living agents has received a lot of attention in recent years due to a wealth of important potential applications. Biomimetic approaches are often sought, and a range of herding…

Other Quantitative Biology · Quantitative Biology 2026-02-20 Daniel Strömbom , Julianna Hoitt , Cameron Cloud

This paper presents a novel control strategy for multi-agent shepherding of non-cohesive targets in obstacle-rich environments. Unlike previous approaches that assume cohesive flocking behavior, our method handles targets that interact only…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2026-04-27 Cinzia Tomaselli , Stefano Covone , Andreagiovanni Reina , Mario di Bernardo

In fields such as mining, search and rescue, and archaeological exploration, ensuring real-time, collision-free navigation of robots in confined, cluttered environments is imperative. Despite the value of established path planning…

Robotics · Computer Science 2024-03-28 Manan Tayal , Shishir Kolathaya

In this paper, we consider a way to safely navigate the robots in unknown environments using measurement data from sensory devices. The control barrier function (CBF) is one of the promising approaches to encode safety requirements of the…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2023-08-11 Wataru Hashimoto , Kazumune Hashimoto , Akifumi Wachi , Xun Shen , Masako Kishida , Shigemasa Takai

This paper proposes a novel swarm-based control algorithm for exploration and coverage of unknown environments, while maintaining a formation that permits short-range communication. The algorithm combines two elements: swarm rules for…

Robotics · Computer Science 2022-01-26 Vu Phi Tran , Matthew A. Garratt , Kathryn Kasmarik , Sreenatha G. Anavatti
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