Title: A new procedure for multi-mode sequential flocking with application to multiple non-holonomic mobile robot motion control: implementation and analysis

Authors: Lei Cheng; Xiu-Juan Zheng; Huai-Yu Wu; Quan-Min Zhu; Yong-Ji Wang; Hassan Nouri

Addresses: Engineering Research Center of Metallurgical Automation and Measurement Technology, Ministry of Education, Wuhan University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, 430081, China; Faculty of Computing, Engineering and Mathematical Sciences, University of the West of England, Bristol, BS16 1QY, UK. ' Engineering Research Center of Metallurgical Automation and Measurement Technology, Ministry of Education, Wuhan University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, 430081, China. ' Engineering Research Center of Metallurgical Automation and Measurement Technology, Ministry of Education, Wuhan University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, 430081, China. ' Faculty of Computing, Engineering and Mathematical Sciences, University of the West of England, Bristol, BS16 1QY, UK. ' Department of Control Science and Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, 430074, China. ' Faculty of Computing, Engineering and Mathematical Sciences, University of the West of England, Bristol, BS16 1QY, UK

Abstract: This is the second of a two-part paper that investigates the multi-mode sequential flocking with application to multiple non-holonomic mobile robot motion control. In this part, a multiple mobile robot simulation system based on MuRoS is used to simulate the real multiple mobile robots running environment. Furthermore, an analysis method of the flocking system based on 'minimum stable time' is proposed, which can be employed to analyse the performance of multi-mode sequential flocking of mobile robots team. At last, bench tests have been comprehensively conducted to demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed procedures on efficient collision and obstacle avoidance in flocking motion, which were described in the first part.

Keywords: multi-robot control; multiple robots; flocking control; simulation; sequential flocking; non-holonomic robots; mobile robots; robot control; motion control; obstacle avoidance; collision avoidance.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMIC.2012.046695

International Journal of Modelling, Identification and Control, 2012 Vol.16 No.1, pp.50 - 59

Published online: 17 Dec 2014 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article