Swarms, and Flocks and Formations...Oh My!

Both science and science fiction have dreamed up the concept of robot swarms (aka flocks) -- massive groups of robots that perform complex cooperative tasks like ants or bees. Scary things, like this scene out of the Amazon:


Prof. Esposito is working on getting robots to do the same things. In this video the robots are supposed to gather round the object in preparation to push it. The robots have three simultaneous objectives (1) force the distance between the box and themselves to zero; (2) do not collide with other robots; (3) contact the box at the location that maximized their moment arm (their ability to exert torques on the object). A navigation function is created that incorporates all of these objectives in a provably correct fashion. This results in paths where the robots bow away from each other and try to contact the box on the far facets of at the corners of the box.


In this video, the robots cooperate to push the box across the room. They use a remarkably simple control law that requires no explicit communication between the robots.


We use the Matlab Tolbox for the iRobot Create (MTIC) to control the robots from a base station, and the Vicon Motion Capture system as an indoor GPS.