Name: MAURO SERGIO MAFRA MOREIRA
Publication date: 28/02/2020
Advisor:
Name |
Role |
|---|---|
| MARIO SARCINELLI FILHO | Advisor * |
Examining board:
| Name |
Role |
|---|---|
| ALEXANDRE SANTOS BRANDÃO | Co advisor * |
| ELIETE MARIA DE OLIVEIRA CALDEIRA | External Examiner * |
| IGOR HENRIQUE BELOTI PIZETTA | External Examiner * |
| LUCAS VAGO SANTANA | External Examiner * |
| MARIO SARCINELLI FILHO | Advisor * |
Summary: This work proposes a controller to autonomously guide a formation of two mobile robots, a differential drive wheeled one and an aerial one, in tasks of positioning. The controller is designed considering the paradigm of
virtual structure, in which the virtual structure is the imaginary tridimensional straight line linking the two robots, and adopting the technique of null space, to split the whole control task in two sub-tasks, which are to
keep the formation and to move the formation. To do that the formation is described by a set of variables, the formation variables, which are derived from the individual robot positions. To apply the null-space technique, the formation variables are grouped into two sets, one associated to the shape of the virtual structure and the other associated to the position of the virtual structure. The use of the null space technique allows giving higher priority to the sub-task of keeping the formation shape, leaving the sub-task of moving the virtual
structure to a new position with a lower priority, thus generating a rigid formation. Although the reverse situation, to give higher priority to the movement of the formation to a new position, generating a flexible
formation, is also possible, simulated and experimental results have shown that to give higher priority to keep the shape of the formation is the best solution. The reason is that we are aiming at applications demanding
that the position of the aerial robot with respect to the ground one be well known along time, allowing the aerial vehicle to land over the terrestrial one, which would be, for instance, the last phase of a package delivery
mission.
