1. www.guardians-project.eu Non-communicative robot swarming in the GUARDIANS project J. Sàez-Pons Lyuba Alboul Veysel Gazi Jacques Penders 8 January, RISE 08

2. www.guardians-project.eu G UARDIANS project © Jaime Alemany

3. www.guardians-project.eu Contents Non-communicative robot swarming Potential functions method Simulation results Conclusions Future work

4. www.guardians-project.eu Non-communicative robot swarming Robot formation and keeping No communication robot-robot No communication robot-human

5. www.guardians-project.eu Method Social potential functions [Reif and Wang 99] Each robot R i calculates a Force F i, which is the generator of the new velocity vector of the robot Assumptions: Each robot can distinguish between obstacles, humans and other robots

6. www.guardians-project.eu Robot-robot potential function Where position vector, euclidean norm, and is the vector from robot i to j ij

7. www.guardians-project.eu Robot-obstacle potential function i p Where position vector, euclidean norm, and is the vector from robot i to p

8. www.guardians-project.eu Robot-human potential function h i

9. www.guardians-project.eu Artificial potential function (APF) ij p h Robot-Human Robot-Robot Robot-Obstacle

10. www.guardians-project.eu Simulation results -Video - Player software (robot device interface) - Stage (2D multiple robot simulator) - Erratic model equipped with Hokuyo laser rangefinder

11. www.guardians-project.eu Simulation results -Video

12. www.guardians-project.eu Simulation results

13. www.guardians-project.eu Conclusions Formation generation around the fire fighter with no communication between team components Potential field method suitability Robot-human team navigation Swarm obstacle avoidance Flexibility –Number of robots –Robust to failures of individual robots Problems using APF –Local minima –Overwhelmed situations

14. www.guardians-project.eu Future work More complex scenarios: –More obstacles –Narrow corridors –Doors Combination of different control behaviours –Wall-following –Lost robot situation –… Study other attraction/repulsion potential functions THANK YOU!