Open Access Publications
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Open access publications by faculty, staff, postdocs, and graduate students from the Center for Autonomous and Robotic Systems (CARS).
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Item Multi-modal Swarm Coordination via Hopf Bifurcations(Journal of Intelligent and Robotic Systems, 2023-10-04) Baxevani, Kleio; Tanner, Herbert G.This paper outlines a methodology for the construction of vector fields that can enable a multi-robot system moving on the plane to generate multiple dynamical behaviors by adjusting a single scalar parameter. This parameter essentially triggers a Hopf bifurcation in an underlying time-varying dynamical system that steers a robotic swarm. This way, the swarm can exhibit a variety of behaviors that arise from the same set of continuous differential equations. Other approaches to bifurcation-based swarm coordination rely on agent interaction which cannot be realized if the swarm members cannot sense or communicate with one another. The contribution of this paper is to offer an alternative method for steering minimally instrumented multi-robot collectives with a control strategy that can realize a multitude of dynamical behaviors without switching their constituent equations. Through this approach, analytical solutions for the bifurcation parameter are provided, even for more complex cases that are described in the literature, along with the process to apply this theory in a multi-agent setup. The theoretical predictions are confirmed via simulation and experimental results with the latter also demonstrating real-world applicability.Item Editorial: Thought leaders in robotics and AI(Frontiers in Robotics and AI, 2023-08-08) Tanner, Herbert G.The purpose of this short Research Topic is to highlight some directions within the long-term research vision of selected robotics experts. The intention is to spark discussion and debated on these subjects as a means of promoting the importance of the associated technical problems and moving the research further forward. The three papers that comprise this Research Topic are titled, in alphabetical order of their authors: “From the lab to the field with evolutionary field robotics,” by Howard; “Progress and challenges in adaptive robotics,” by Nolfi; and “Towards understanding and synthesis of contact-rich anthropomorphic motions throught interactive cyber-physical human” [platfrom] by Yoshida.Item Resilient Ground Vehicle Autonomous Navigation in GPS-denied Environments(Guidance, Navigation and Control, 2022-11-23) Baxevani, Kleio; Yadav, Indrajeet; Yang, Yulin; Sebok, Michael; Tanner, Herbert G.; Huang, GuoquanCo-design and integration of vehicle navigation and control and state estimation is key for enabling field deployment of mobile robots in GPS-denied cluttered environments, and sensor calibration is critical for successful operation of both subsystems. This paper demonstrates the potential of this co-design approach with field tests of the integration of a reactive receding horizon-based motion planner and controller with an inertial aided multi-sensor calibration scheme. The reported method provides accurate calibration parameters that improve the performance of the state estimator, and enable the motion controller to generate smooth and continuous minimal-jerk trajectories based on local LiDAR data. Numerical simulations in Unity, and real-world experimental results from the field corroborate the claims of efficacy for the reported autonomous navigation computational pipeline.