Distributed control for a robotic swarm to pass through a curve virtual tube

To guide a robotic swarm in a cluttered environment, a curve virtual tube is designed in this paper. There is no obstacle within the curve virtual tube, and the area inside can be seen as a safety zone. Then, a distributed swarm controller is proposed with three elaborate control terms. Formal analyses and proofs show that the curve virtual tube passing-through control problem can be solved in a finite time. For convenience in practical use, a modified controller with an approximate control performance is put forward. Some control laws for different types of robots to track their vector fields are also presented. The effectiveness of the proposed method is validated by numerical simulations and real experiments. To show the advantages of the proposed method, the comparisons between our method and other methods are also presented.(c) 2023 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Automated summary

In this paper, a curve virtual tube is designed to guide a robotic swarm in a cluttered environment. The curve virtual tube acts as a safety zone with no obstacles inside. A distributed swarm controller is proposed with three control terms, and formal analyses show that the control problem of the curve virtual tube can be solved in a finite time. A modified controller with approximate control performance is also presented for practical use. Numerical simulations, real experiments, and comparisons with other methods validate the effectiveness and advantages of the proposed method.