A cooperative hunting behavior by multiple nonholonomic mobile robots

Abstract

This paper presents smooth time-varying feedback control law for coordinating motions of multiple nonholonomic mobile robots of the Hilare-type to capture/enclose target by forming troop formations. This motion coordination is cooperative behavior for security against invaders in surveillance areas. Each robot in this control law has its own coordinate system and it senses target/invader, other robots and obstacles, to achieve this cooperative behavior without making any collision. Each robot especially has called a formation vector and formations are controllable by the vectors. As for determining the formation vectors, we use reactive control framework in which robots have reactions heuristically designed according to this cooperative behavior. Therefore, this robotic system is hybrid system that consists of smooth time-varying feedback control law and reactive control framework. The validity of this hybrid system is supported by computer simulations.