Safety-critical target enclosing control for multi-robot systems: A robust reconfigurable strategy

Area of Science:

• Robotics
• Control Systems Engineering
• Fault-Tolerant Systems

Background:

• Multi-robot systems require robust control for complex tasks.
• Actuator faults and external disturbances pose significant challenges to system stability and performance.
• Existing control strategies often struggle with reconfiguration and safety under dynamic environmental conditions.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a fault-tolerant target enclosing control framework for multi-robot systems.
• To enhance system resilience against actuator faults and external disturbances.
• To ensure safety, including obstacle and inter-robot collision avoidance.

Main Methods:

• A target enclosing framework based on bearing rigidity theory.
• A fixed-time disturbance observer for estimating lumped disturbances.
• A hierarchical fault-tolerant strategy with adaptive countermeasures (active compensation, leader reassignment, robot detachment).
• A quadratic programming-based controller incorporating control barrier functions for safety.

Main Results:

• The proposed framework uniquely determines formation shape using inter-robot bearing measurements.
• The fault-tolerant strategy effectively adapts to actuator constraints and disturbances.
• Control barrier functions ensure safe navigation, including obstacle and collision avoidance.
• Simulations and experiments validate the algorithm's effectiveness.

Conclusions:

• The developed algorithm provides robust and reconfigurable target enclosing control for multi-robot systems.
• The integrated approach effectively handles actuator faults and external disturbances while maintaining system safety.
• The study demonstrates a significant advancement in resilient multi-robot coordination.