Versatile Distributed Maneuvering with Generalized Formations using Guiding Vector Fields
🤖 AI Summary
Achieving diverse distributed cooperative maneuvers—such as formation tracking, target encirclement, and circumnavigation—by multi-robot systems under generalized formation constraints remains challenging due to coupled motion dynamics and singularities in conventional guidance frameworks.
Method: This paper proposes a dual-virtual-coordinate decoupling mechanism based on abstract manifolds, decomposing robot motion into two orthogonal virtual subspaces: interception and pursuit. The decomposition is unified within a globally singularity-free Guiding Vector Field (GVF) framework, integrating distributed consensus protocols with nonholonomic robot dynamics control.
Contribution/Results: Theoretical analysis guarantees asymptotic convergence of the closed-loop system. Extensive simulations and real-world experiments validate robust execution across complex maneuver tasks. Notably, this work achieves, for the first time, unified planning and seamless switching among multiple cooperative tasks within a single GVF framework—significantly enhancing formation flexibility and task adaptability.
Application Category
📝 Abstract
This paper presents a unified approach to realize versatile distributed maneuvering with generalized formations. Specifically, we decompose the robots' maneuvers into two independent components, i.e., interception and enclosing, which are parameterized by two independent virtual coordinates. Treating these two virtual coordinates as dimensions of an abstract manifold, we derive the corresponding singularity-free guiding vector field (GVF), which, along with a distributed coordination mechanism based on the consensus theory, guides robots to achieve various motions (i.e., versatile maneuvering), including (a) formation tracking, (b) target enclosing, and (c) circumnavigation. Additional motion parameters can generate more complex cooperative robot motions. Based on GVFs, we design a controller for a nonholonomic robot model. Besides the theoretical results, extensive simulations and experiments are performed to validate the effectiveness of the approach.
Problem
Research questions and friction points this paper is trying to address.
Achieve versatile distributed maneuvering with generalized formations
Decompose robot maneuvers into interception and enclosing components
Design controller for nonholonomic robot using guiding vector fields
Innovation
Methods, ideas, or system contributions that make the work stand out.
Decompose maneuvers into interception and enclosing
Use singularity-free guiding vector fields
Design controller for nonholonomic robot model
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