Cooperative decentralized reactive circumnavigation of unpredictably moving and deforming speedy extended objects

Abstract

Abstract A team of speed- and acceleration-limited robots travel in a plane that hosts an unpredictably moving and deforming extended targeted object. In its local frame, every robot has access to its own velocity and is able to identify the relative coordinates of the objects within a given finite visibility range, as well as the nearest point of the object. A sliding mode communication-free sensor-based strategy is presented that drives the robots to a desired distance from the targeted object and ensures its subsequent circumnavigation with maintaining this distance and effective self-distribution around the object. The proposed control law individually operates at any robot and is reactive, i.e., it directly converts the current sensory data into the current control in a reflex-like fashion. The performance of the proposed navigation law is rigorously justified by a global convergence result and is confirmed via computer simulation tests.