aiqbench analysis
This research addresses a critical safety gap in multi-robot systems by enforcing collision avoidance constraints directly on physical actuator inputs rather than just reference trajectories. By integrating density-driven optimal control with control barrier functions, the method ensures that robots maintain required separation while achieving uniform spatial coverage without violating hardware limits. The work advances the reliability of autonomous robot swarms operating in complex, non-uniform environments where traditional safety filters often fail to account for dynamic motion and actuation delays.
Density-Driven Area Coverage for Nonholonomic Multi-Robot Systems with Safety Guarantee
arXiv:2609.22668v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Density-Driven Optimal Control (D2OC) provides a principled approach to distributing multi-robot teams over non-uniform spatial distributions. Applying D2OC to nonholonomic robots, however, creates a gap between safety constraints imposed on a reference motion and the physical inputs that determine the actual robot motion. We address this issue by enforcing the safety constraint directly on the robot's physical inputs while preserving the density-driven coverage objective. The proposed framework combines D2OC with a control barrier function safety filter through a feedback-linearizing look-ahead point, allowing safety and actuator limits to be considered together during control. We further derive a safety margin that accounts for the look-ahead geometry, robot footprint, and motion during each control interval. Simulation results show that the proposed method maintains the required physical separation while achieving coverage performance comparable to a conventional reference-tracking approach, which can satisfy safety on the reference motion yet violate the corresponding physical clearance. Experiments on multiple nonholonomic robots in the Robotarium further demonstrate safe execution while driving the robots toward the desired spatial distribution. These results show that enforcing safety directly on the physical inputs can eliminate the mismatch between safety certification and physical robot motion in density-driven multi-robot coverage.
Abstract:Density-Driven Optimal Control (D2OC) provides a principled approach to distributing multi-robot teams over non-uniform spatial distributions. Applying D2OC to nonholonomic robots, however, creates a gap between safety constraints imposed on a reference motion and the physical inputs that determine the actual robot motion. We address this issue by enforcing the safety constraint directly on the robot's physical inputs while preserving the density-driven coverage objective. The proposed framework combines D2OC with a control barrier function safety filter through a feedback-linearizing look-ahead point, allowing safety and actuator limits to be considered together during control. We further derive a safety margin that accounts for the look-ahead geometry, robot footprint, and motion during each control interval. Simulation results show that the proposed method maintains the required physical separation while achieving coverage performance comparable to a conventional reference-tracking approach, which can satisfy safety on the reference motion yet violate the corresponding physical clearance. Experiments on multiple nonholonomic robots in the Robotarium further demonstrate safe execution while driving the robots toward the desired spatial distribution. These results show that enforcing safety directly on the physical inputs can eliminate the mismatch between safety certification and physical robot motion in density-driven multi-robot coverage.
Robotics (cs.RO); Multiagent Systems (cs.MA); Optimization and Control (math.OC)
arXiv:2609.22668 [cs.RO]
(or arXiv:2609.22668v1 [cs.RO] for this version)
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2609.22668 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)
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Full text under the publisher's open licence · 295 words
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