Skip to main content
Log in

Multi-robot deployment and coordination with Embedded Graph Grammars

  • Published:
Autonomous Robots Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

This paper presents a framework for going from specifications to implementations of decentralized control strategies for multi-robot systems. In particular, we show how the use of Embedded Graph Grammars (EGGs) provides a tool for characterizing local interaction and control laws. This paper highlights some key implementation aspects of the EGG formalism, and develops and discusses experimental results for a hexapod-based multi-robot system, as well as a multi-robot system of wheeled robots.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Brockett, R. W. (1988). On the computer control of movement. In IEEE international conference on robotics and automation, New York, April 1988 (pp. 534–540).

  • Cortes, J., Martinez, S., & Bullo, F. (2006). Robust rendezvous for mobile autonomous agents via proximity graphs in arbitrary dimensions. IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, 51(8), 1289–1298.

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  • Egerstedt, M., & Brockett, R. (2003). Feedback can reduce the specification complexity of motor programs. IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, 48(2), 213–223.

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  • Hendrickx, J. M., Anderson, B. D. O., Delvenne, J.-C., & Blondel, V. D. (2007). Directed graphs for the analysis of rigidity and persistence in autonomous agent systems, International Journal of Robust and Nonlinear Control.

  • Henneberg, L. (1911). Die graphische statik der starren systeme.

  • Henzinger, T. (1996). The theory of hybrid automata. In 11th annual symposium on logic in computer science (LICS). Los Alamitos: IEEE Comput. Soc.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jadbabaie, A., Lin, J., & Morse, A. S. (2003). Coordination of groups of mobile autonomous agents using nearest neighbor rules. IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, 48(6), 988–1001.

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  • Klavins, E. (2004). A language for modeling and programming cooperative control systems. In IEEE international conference on robotics and automation.

  • Klavins, E., Ghrist, R., & Lipsky, D. (2004). Graph grammars for self-assembling robotic systems. In IEEE international conference on robotics and automation.

  • Lygeros, J., Tomlin, C., & Sastry, S. (1999). Controllers for reachability specifications for hybrid systems. Automatica, 35(3), 349–370.

    Article  MATH  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  • Manikonda, V., Krishnaprasad, P. S., & Hendler, J. (1998). Languages, behaviors, hybrid architectures and motion control. In Mathematical control theory (pp. 199–226). Berlin: Springer.

    Google Scholar 

  • McLurkin, J., & Smith, J. (2004). Distributed algorithms for dispersion in indoor environments using a swarm of autonomous mobile robots. In Distributed autonomous robotic systems conference.

  • McLurkin, J., & Yamins, D. (2005). Dynamic task assignment in robot swarms. In Robotics: science and systems conference.

  • McLurkin, J., Smith, J., Frankel, J., Sotkowitz, D., Blau, D., & Schmidt, B. (2006). Speaking swarmish: Human-robot interface design for large swarms of autonomous mobile robots. In AAAI spring symposium.

  • McNew, J. M., & Klavins, E. (2005). A grammatical approach to cooperative control: The scouts and intruders example. In S. Butenko, R. Murphey, & P. Pardalos (Eds.), Cooperative control and optimization.

  • McNew, J.-M., & Klavins, E. (2006). Locally interacting hybrid systems with embedded graph grammars. In 45th IEEE conference on decision and control (pp. 6080–6087).

  • McNew, J. M., Egerstedt, M., & Klavins, E. (2007). Solving coverage problems with embedded graph grammars. In Lecture notes in computer science : Vol. 4416. Hybrid systems: computation and control, Pisa, Italy (pp. 413–427). Berlin: Springer.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Mesbahi, M. (2005). On state-dependent dynamic graphs and their controllability properties. IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, 50(3), 387–392.

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  • Samad, T., & Bay, J. (2006). Multiagent sensing and control: Surveillance and reconnaissance for urban operations. In Mathematical theory of networks and systems, Kyoto, Japan.

  • Smith, B. S., Egerstedt, M., & Howard, A. (2007). Automatic generation of persistent formations for multi-agent networks under range constraints. In Proceedings of the first international conference on robot communication and coordination.

  • Smith, B. S., Egerstedt, M., & Howard, A. (2008). Automatic deployment and formation control of decentralized multi-agent networks. In Proceedings of the IEEE international conference on robotics and automation.

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Brian Smith.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Smith, B., Howard, A., McNew, JM. et al. Multi-robot deployment and coordination with Embedded Graph Grammars. Auton Robot 26, 79–98 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10514-008-9107-6

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10514-008-9107-6

Keywords

Navigation