Research On Control Of Flocking Motion Of Multiple Mobile Robots

One of the hot topics in robot field is coordinated control of multiple mobile robots recent years, in which there have witnessed a rapidly increasing interest in control of flocking motion of multiple mobile robots. The effort has been inspired by common flocking behaviors in nature. Such as flocking of birds, and swarming of herds. Here are the three basic rules of flocking presented by Reynolds: attempt to match velocity with nearby flockmates; attempt to stay close to nearby flockmates; avoid collisions with nearby flockmates. The research of coordinated control of multi-robot in this thesis bases on the three rules. A number of robots can be controlled by flocking control theory. And it's very important in military and civil field.Firstly, the thesis introduces some popular topics in multi-robot field in or out of China, makes a deep and systematic study of the architecture of the C/S robot's software and hardware based on the Pioneer II robot which is made by ActivMedia Robotics Company. Both wireless control architecture of single robot and wireless control architecture of multiple robots are provided for the next chapters. Multi-thread technology and socket programming using of TCP/UDP are discussed at the same time.Then three classical theory of multi-robot coordination are introduced, of which the benefit and shortage be discussed respectively. And the basic theory of flocking is studied detailed. By combining the leader-follower model with flocking control, a new method for multi-robots coordination is educed.Next several algorithms on multi-robot obstacle avoidance are introduced. After comparing the advantage and disadvantage of them, we choose the artificial potential field for the strategy of obstacle avoidance. In order to let the mobile keep a safe distance off obstacles, the artificial field potential theory be improved and used in flocking control of multi-robots. Finally, simulations are presented about control of flocking motion of multiple mobile robots with virtual leader and obstacle avoidance using potential field. And we have experiment about the flocking motion with three robots. The results reveal the feasibility and the availability of the model we present.