Ecologically inspired cooperative control of multi-robot systems

In this paper we propose a new ecologically inspired control methodology for cooperative control of multi-robot systems. In this method we identify each individual robot as a subsystem of a large system and build the interactions between these subsystems to satisfy the design requirements. Interactions between these subsystems are built such that they mimic the interspecific (between species) interactions in an ecosystem. In the mathematical formulation of the control design, the subsystems and interactions between these subsystems are matrices whereas, interspecific interaction principles in an ecosystem are scalar in dimension. The novelty of this method lies in extending ecological principles that defined for scalars to matrices and then using these results in the design of the controller. Since we define the block matrices on the diagonal as the subsystems, the off-block-diagonal matrices clearly represent the interactions between these subsystems. Since control design involves determination of the off-block-diagonal matrices, it is seen that there is sufficient flexibility in the design of the controller.