Bilateral teleoperation of groups of mobile robots with time-varying topology

Antonio Franchi; Cristian Secchi; Hyoung Il Son; Heinrich H. Bülthoff; Paolo Robuffo Giordano

doi:10.1109/TRO.2012.2196304

Bilateral teleoperation of groups of mobile robots with time-varying topology

Antonio Franchi, Cristian Secchi, Hyoung Il Son, Heinrich H. Bülthoff, Paolo Robuffo Giordano

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

190 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

In this paper, a novel decentralized control strategy for bilaterally teleoperating heterogeneous groups of mobile robots from different domains (aerial, ground, marine, and underwater) is proposed. By using a decentralized control architecture, the group of robots, which is treated as the slave side, is made able to navigate in a cluttered environment while avoiding obstacles, interrobot collisions, and following the human motion commands. Simultaneously, the human operator acting on the master side is provided with a suitable force feedback informative of the group response and of the interaction with the surrounding environment. Using passivity-based techniques, we allow the behavior of the group to be as flexible as possible with arbitrary split and join events (e.g., due to interrobot visibility/packet losses or specific task requirements) while guaranteeing the stability of the system. We provide a rigorous analysis of the system stability and steady-state characteristics and validate performance through human/hardware-in-the-loop simulations by considering a heterogeneous fleet of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and unmanned ground vehicles as a case study. Finally, we also provide an experimental validation with four quadrotor UAVs.

Original language	English
Article number	6199993
Pages (from-to)	1019-1033
Number of pages	15
Journal	IEEE Transactions on Robotics
Volume	28
Issue number	5
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1109/TRO.2012.2196304
Publication status	Published - 2012

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
Manuscript received October 10, 2011; revised February 23, 2012; accepted April 17, 2012. Date of publication May 14, 2012; date of current version September 28, 2012. This paper was recommended for publication by Associate Editor E. Guglielmelli and Editor W. K. Chung upon evaluation of the reviewers comments. This work was supported in part by the World Class University program funded by the Ministry of Education, Science, and Technology through the National Research Foundation of Korea under Grant R31-10008.

Keywords

Decentralized control
distributed algorithms
distributed robot systems
haptics
mobile agents
multirobot systems
networked robots
passivity-based control
teleoperation of mobile robots
telerobotics

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Control and Systems Engineering
Computer Science Applications
Electrical and Electronic Engineering

UN SDGs

This output contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

Access to Document

10.1109/TRO.2012.2196304

Cite this

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title = "Bilateral teleoperation of groups of mobile robots with time-varying topology",

abstract = "In this paper, a novel decentralized control strategy for bilaterally teleoperating heterogeneous groups of mobile robots from different domains (aerial, ground, marine, and underwater) is proposed. By using a decentralized control architecture, the group of robots, which is treated as the slave side, is made able to navigate in a cluttered environment while avoiding obstacles, interrobot collisions, and following the human motion commands. Simultaneously, the human operator acting on the master side is provided with a suitable force feedback informative of the group response and of the interaction with the surrounding environment. Using passivity-based techniques, we allow the behavior of the group to be as flexible as possible with arbitrary split and join events (e.g., due to interrobot visibility/packet losses or specific task requirements) while guaranteeing the stability of the system. We provide a rigorous analysis of the system stability and steady-state characteristics and validate performance through human/hardware-in-the-loop simulations by considering a heterogeneous fleet of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and unmanned ground vehicles as a case study. Finally, we also provide an experimental validation with four quadrotor UAVs.",

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Bilateral teleoperation of groups of mobile robots with time-varying topology

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Keywords

ASJC Scopus subject areas

UN SDGs

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