Behavior-based fuzzy control framework for multi-mobile-robot deployment

This paper proposes a behavior-based fuzzy control framework for controlling a multi-robot system (MRS) to approach desired sensory coverage in an unknown environment while maintaining wireless communication connections and avoiding collisions. Such an MRS consists of multiple mobile robots with limited onboard sensing and wireless communication capabilities. Each robot can perform two categories of behaviors: 1) fundamental behaviors, e.g. forming sensory coverage, maintaining wireless communication connections, and avoiding collisions, are necessary for reliable functioning of the MRS; 2) application behaviors, e.g. search and exploration, are defined to fulfill the goals of specific deployment tasks. In the proposed control architecture, these behaviors are realized by appropriately-defined parallel fuzzy controllers with different priorities, and behaviors can easily be added or removed by adding or removing corresponding parallel fuzzy controllers without affecting other behaviors. The effectiveness of the proposed fuzzy control framework has been verified through a series of simulated deployment and destination approaching tasks over unknown environments.