University of Würzburg

https://www.uni-wuerzburg.de/en/university/

Trajectory planning and optimal control for formations of autonomous robots

Design of novel approaches for formation driving of nonholonomic robots and optimal trajectory planning to reach a target region. The methods consider a static known map of the environment as well as unknown and dynamic obstacles detected by sensors of the formation. The algorithms are based on leader following techniques, where the formation of car-like robots is maintained in a shape determined by curvilinear coordinates. Beyond this, the general methods of formation driving are specialized and extended for an application of airport snow shoveling.

 

Autonomous "snow" shoveling of an airport model.

A group of autonomous robots cooperatively cleaning a model of airport from artificial snow. The approach is based on a model predictive control technique.

Navigation, localization and stabilization of formations of unmanned aerial and ground vehicles.

A leader-follower formation driving algorithm developed for control of heterogeneous groups of unmanned micro aerial and ground vehicles stabilized under a top-view relative localization is presented. The core of the proposed method lies in a novel avoidance function, in which the entire 3D formation is represented by a convex hull projected along a desired path to be followed by the group.
 

Publications

Journals:

  1. M Saska, J S Mejia, D M Stipanovic, V Vonasek, K Schilling and L Preucil. Control and Navigation in Manoeuvres of Formations of Unmanned Mobile Vehicles. European Journal of Control 19(2):157–171, March 2013. PDF BibTeX

    @article{Saska13:206004,
	author = "Saska, M. and Mejia, J.S. and Stipanovic, D.M. and Vonasek, V. and Schilling, K. and Preucil, L.",
	title = "{Control and Navigation in Manoeuvres of Formations of Unmanned Mobile Vehicles}",
	journal = "European Journal of Control",
	year = 2013,
	volume = 19,
	number = 2,
	pages = "157--171",
	month = "March",
	pdf = "data/papers/European_Journal_control2013.pdf"
}

  2. M Hess, M Saska and K Schilling. Application of Coordinated Multi Vehicle Formations for Snow Shoveling on Airports. Inteligent Service Robotics 2(4):205 – 217, 2009. PDF BibTeX

    @article{hess09mechatronics,
	author = "Hess, M. and Saska, M. and Schilling, K.",
	title = "Application of Coordinated Multi Vehicle Formations for Snow Shoveling on Airports",
	journal = "Inteligent Service Robotics",
	year = 2009,
	volume = 2,
	number = 4,
	pages = "205 -- 217",
	pdf = "data/papers/IntelligentServiceRoboticsJournal.pdf"
}

WoS conference papers:

  1. M Saska, J S Mejia, D M Stipanovic and K Schilling. Control and Navigation of Formations of Car-Like Robots on a Receding Horizon. In IEEE Multi-conference on Systems and Control. 2009. PDF BibTeX

    @inproceedings{Saska09MSC,
	author = "M. Saska and J. S. Mejia and D. M. Stipanovic and K. Schilling",
	title = "Control and Navigation of Formations of Car-Like Robots on a Receding Horizon",
	booktitle = "IEEE Multi-conference on Systems and Control",
	year = 2009,
	pdf = "data/papers/MSC-joined.pdf"
}

  2. M Saska, M Hess and K Schilling. Efficient Airport Snow Shoveling by Applying Autonomous Multi-Vehicle Formations. In IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA). 2008. PDF BibTeX

    @conference{saska08icra,
	author = "Saska, M. and Hess, M. and Schilling, K.",
	title = "Efficient Airport Snow Shoveling by Applying Autonomous Multi-Vehicle Formations",
	booktitle = "IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA)",
	year = 2008,
	pdf = "data/papers/ICRA2008-joined.pdf"
}

  3. M Saska, M Hess and K Schilling. Route Scheduling Approach for Airport Snow Shoveling using Formations of Autonomous Ploughs. In 10th International Conference on Control, Automation, Robotics and Vision (ICARCV). 2008. PDF BibTeX

    @conference{saska08icarcv,
	author = "Saska, M. and Hess, M. and Schilling, K.",
	title = "Route Scheduling Approach for Airport Snow Shoveling using Formations of Autonomous Ploughs",
	booktitle = "10th International Conference on Control, Automation, Robotics and Vision (ICARCV)",
	year = 2008,
	pdf = "data/papers/icarcv2008_Route Scheduling Approach.pdf"
}

  4. M Saska, M Hess and K Schilling. Voronoi Strains - A Spline Path Planning Algorithm for Complex Environments. In IASTED conference on Artificial Intelligence and Applications. 2007. PDF BibTeX

    @conference{saska07VStrains,
	author = "Saska, M. and Hess, M. and Schilling, K.",
	title = "Voronoi Strains - A Spline Path Planning Algorithm for Complex Environments",
	booktitle = "IASTED conference on Artificial Intelligence and Applications",
	year = 2007,
	pdf = "data/papers/VoronoiStrains-joined.pdf"
}

  5. M Saska, M Hess and K Schilling. Hierarchical Spline Path Planning Method for Complex Environments. In 4th International Conference on Informatics in Control, Automation and Robotics.. 2007. PDF BibTeX

    @conference{Saska07hierarchical,
	author = "M. Saska and M. Hess and K. Schilling",
	title = "Hierarchical Spline Path Planning Method for Complex Environments",
	booktitle = "4th International Conference on Informatics in Control, Automation and Robotics.",
	year = 2007,
	pdf = "data/papers/hierarchicalPSO-crop-joined.pdf"
}