Feasibility and coordination of multiple mobile vehicles with mixed equality and inequality constraints
For researchers in multi-robot coordination, this work provides a theoretical framework and heuristic method for determining feasibility under heterogeneous dynamics and constraints, though it is incremental in nature.
This paper addresses feasible coordination control for multiple mobile vehicles under mixed equality and inequality constraints, developing a framework based on differential-algebraic equations and viability theory. The proposed heuristic algorithm generates feasible trajectories, validated through simulations on multi-vehicle coordination tasks.
We consider the problem of feasible coordination control for multiple homogeneous or heterogeneous mobile vehicles subject to various constraints (nonholonomic motion constraints, holonomic coordination constraints, equality/inequality constraints etc). We develop a general framework involving differential-algebraic equations and viability theory to describe and determine coordination feasibility for a coordinated motion control under heterogeneous vehicle dynamics and different types of coordination constraints. If a solution exists for the derived differential-algebraic equations and/or inequalities, a heuristic algorithm is proposed for generating feasible trajectories for each individual vehicle. In case studies on coordinating two vehicles, we derive analytical solutions to motion generation for two-vehicle groups consisting of car-like vehicles, unicycle vehicles, or vehicles with constant speeds, which serve as benchmark coordination tasks for more complex vehicle groups. We show several simulation experiments on multi-vehicle coordination under various constraints to validate the theory and the effectiveness of the proposed schemes.