Optimal Topology Selection for Stable Coordination of Asymmetrically Interacting Multi-Robot Systems

Published in IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2020

In this paper, we address the problem of optimal topology selection for stable coordination of multi-robot systems with asymmetric interactions. This problem arises naturally for multi-robot systems that interact based on sensing, e.g., with limited field of view (FOV) cameras. From our previous efforts on motion control in such settings, we have shown that not all interaction topologies yield stable coordinated motion when asymmetry exists. At the same time, not all robot-to-robot interactions are of equal quality, and thus we seek to optimize asymmetric interaction topologies subject to the constraint that the topology yields stable multi-robot motion. In this context, we formulate an optimal topology selection problem (OTSP) as a mixed integer semidefinite programming (MISDP) problem to compute optimal topologies that yield stable coordinated motion. Simulation results are provided to corroborate the effectiveness of the proposed OTSP formulation.

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Recommended citation: Mukherjee, Pratik, et al. "Optimal topology selection for stable coordination of asymmetrically interacting multi-robot systems." 2020 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA). IEEE, 2020.
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