The Use of Hybrid Systems in the Control of Cooperative Robots

This paper presents a methodology for modeling the coordination of multi robot teams in the execution of cooperative tasks The main idea is to use hybrid systems theory in order to model the cooperation Basically during the execution of the task each robot can be in one of several discrete states called roles being controlled by di erent dynamic equations in each role The coordination of the team is obtained by the synchronization of discrete state transitions role assignments and communication among the robots The methodology is demonstrated in a cooperative manipulation task in which two heterogeneous robots cooperate in order to transport a large object between two di erent locations in an environment containing obstacles