A broadcast-based coordination scheme for a system of autonomous mobile robots

A method for coordinating a homogeneous swarm of autonomous mobile robots is presented. The broadcast-based coordination scheme was developed for the Army Ant swarm—a system of small, relatively inexpensive mobile robots that can accomplish complex tasks by cooperating as a team. The primary drawback of the Army Ant system is that the absence of a central supervisor poses difficulty in the coordination and control of the agents. Our coordination scheme provides a global "group dynamic" that controls the actions of each robot using only local interactions.

Coordination of the swarm is achieved with signals we call "heartbeats". Each agent broadcasts a unique heartbeat and responds to the collective behavior of all other heartbeats. We generate heartbeats with van der Pol oscillators, which are nonlinear oscillators that modify their output when coupled to other oscillators. Van der Pol oscillators have long been utilized in simulations, particularly to model rhythmic behavior in biological systems. In this application, we use the known properties of coupled van der Pol oscillators to create predictable group behavior. We emphasize the use of this controller to allow agents to simultaneously perform an action such as lifting, steering, or changing speed.

For this research we synthesize a three oscillator network to show that we can achieve multi-agent coordination. An inexpensive FM communication link is used to broadcast and receive oscillator signals. We show that the network may be configured to entrain to a leader or to a common frequency. Additionally, we use our coordination scheme to provide global speed control to our three agent system.