Multi-agent Platform Design Based On E-puck

With the development of science and technology, multi-robot systems havebeen attracted in increasing attention in more and more fields. The applicationshighlight the researches on multi-agent systems. It is necessary to build awell-extended experimental platform for university use.The thesis aims to build a platform for multi-robot research. The current poseand velocity of each robot is obtained through a new approach of color patterndetection. The multi-robot trajectory tracking based on dynamic feedbacklinearization is also studied in this thesis. The main contributions are three-fold:First, a detailed analysis of the platform structure is given, and then a hardwareframework with1meter high,0.7meters width and0.7meters long is built for thefurther experimental study of the proposed platform. E-puck and MV-VE142SC arechosen as the robot and sensor of the system respectively, and communicationsamong camera, PC and e-puck are also given.Second, the camera calibration is discussed in brief, and the MATLABcalibration tool-box is used to implement the parameter calibration. Since the robotsneed to be localized globally, color patterns are used and attached on each robot forthe target recognition. A new color pattern is designed according to platformrequirement. The designed pattern is robust even when one of the color symbol islost. To improve the computation performance, a tracking window is used on eachrobot position detected in the previous frame. Experiments are performed to verifythe real-time, stability and accuracy.Finally, the kinematics model of the e-puck is analyzed, and multi-robottrajectory tracking has been carried out under the dynamic feedback linearizationcontroller.