Formation Rigidity: Dynamic Maintenance and Optimality

Dr. Dan Zelazo (Institute for Systems Theory and Automatic Control, Universitaet Stuttgart)

SYSTEMS AND CONTROL SERIES

DATE: 2012-07-18
TIME: 11:00:00 - 12:00:00
LOCATION: RSISE Seminar Room, ground floor, building 115, cnr. North and Daley Roads, ANU
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ABSTRACT:
Rigidity of formations in multi-robot systems is important for formation control, localization, and sensor fusion. In this talk, we explore how the architectural feature of rigidity in multi-robot systems can be maintained in a distributed fashion. The main analytic result in this direction is an alternative characterization of the rigidity matrix and the introduction of what we term the /rigidity eigenvalue/. This is used to develop a gradient controller to maintain rigidity. We also consider the notion of optimality for rigid formations. In scenarios where there may be multiple sensing links available for each robot, we provide an algorithm for determining which sensing links will lead to a formation that is both rigid and optimal from a systems-theoretic perspective. Both of these topics will be demonstrated in simulation.

BIO:
Dr. Zelazo was born in Milwaukee, WI, in 1977. He received his BSc. and M.Eng degrees in Electrical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1999 and 2001 respectively. In 2009, he completed his Ph.D. from the University of Washington in Aeronautics and Astronautics. In between his Masteras and Ph.D. degrees he worked at Texas Instruments in Japan on audio compression algorithms. Dr. Zelazo is now a research associate at the University of Stuttgart, Germany, with research interests in networked dynamic systems, optimization, and graph theory.