Optimization and Systems Theory Seminar
Friday, April 27, 2001, 11.00-12.00, Room 3721, Lindstedtsvägen 25
Associate Professor Naomi Ehrich Leonard
Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
Princeton University
Princeton, New Jersey
USA
E-mail: naomi@princeton.edu
Schooling autonomous vehicles with artificial potentials
We describe distributed control laws that are designed to allow a
group of autonomous vehicles to perform maneuvers that resemble
schooling or flocking. Natural schools and flocks are notable for
their remarkable capacity to display highly organized group-level
behaviors; the group exhibits an "emergent intelligence" that
arises from individual-level behaviors. For our group of
vehicles, we govern individual-level behavior with control laws
that derive from artificial potentials. Artificial potentials define
local interaction between neighboring vehicles so as to enforce desired
inter-vehicle spacing and inter-vehicle orientation alignment in the
emergent schooling behavior. Virtual beacons are introduced to
manipulate group geometry and direct the motion of the group.
A virtual beacon is a moving reference point that influences
vehicles in its neighborhood by means of additional artificial
potentials. A Lyapunov function is constructed from the artificial
potentials for analysis of the closed-loop, multiple-vehicle system
dynamics. In the case of orientation control of multiple rigid
underwater vehicles in 3D, we make extensive use of symmetry,
reduction and other tools from geometric mechanics. We conclude
with a discussion of the multiple underwater vehicle experimental
test-bed that we are developing at Princeton.
Calendar of seminars
Last update: March 21, 2001 by
Anders Forsgren,
anders.forsgren@math.kth.se.