Title: Constraint Composition and Control Synthesis for Multi-Robot Systems

Committee: 

Dr. Magnus Egerstedt (Adviser) 

Dr. Sam Coogan 

Dr. Seth Hutchinson

Dr. Jonathan Rogers

Dr. Jorge Cortes (UCSD)

Abstract:

From mobile sensor networks to autonomous-transportation systems, multi-agent solutions have been proposed to accomplish a number of tasks.  However, these systems typically require satisfaction of multiple constraints, such as safety or connectivity maintenance, while completing their primary objectives.  Barrier functions represent one method to enforce such constraints via forward set invariance.  Completed work has focused on building a system of Boolean logic for barrier functions by using min and max operators.  As these objects inherently introduce nonsmoothness, the completed work has extended the theory on barrier functions to nonsmooth barrier functions.  Additionally, the completed work has explicitly addressed controlled systems by formulating nonsmooth control barrier functions.  These developments have been successfully applied to a variety of multi-robot systems, including remotely accessible testbeds, autonomous-transportation scenarios, and leader-follower systems.  These results inform the proposed work: to develop a rich and flexible system of logic to enable constraint composition and control synthesis for multi-robot systems.