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Dynamic Tensegrity Based Cooperative Control
of Uninhabited Vehicles
SookYen Lau and Wasif Naeem
School of Electronics, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Queen's University Belfast, University Road, Belfast BT7 1NN, UK
{
slau02,w.naeem
}
@qub.ac.uk
Abstract.
A new formation control methodology is presented in this paper. The
proposed technique is modelled by using the concept of cross-tensegrity struc-
tures. The main task is to regulate the desired formation of a group of vehicles
and to perform point-to-point manoeuvring in the plane. The position of the con-
trolled vehicles in the formation changes with respect to the admissible tendon
forces by varying the lengths of bars in the dynamic tensegrity structure mod-
elling. This change of bars' dimensions for geometric transformation is not possi-
ble in the application of tensegrity concept in the physical structural engineering.
It has been demonstrated that this control method allows more flexibility over a
wide range of different shape switching tasks using the predictable tendon control
forces under the limited communication's range. The proposed approach is also
scalable to any number of pairs of autonomous vehicles in the formation.
1
Introduction
Multi-vehicle formation control can be characterised by the range and orientation an-
gles between the craft which allows all of them to move effectively as a whole to per-
form a cooperative task. This coordination in multiple vehicles has become important
in both theory and practical applications. Vehicles formation control has been widely
performed in land, marine and aerial applications such as transportation, search and res-
cue, exploration, surveillance and microsatellite clusters [CW05]. The most recognised
advantages of this concept include wide sensing area coverage, vast object transporta-
tion and energy conservation due to the reduction of friction in each vehicle, to name a
few.
The problems in formation control often encompass formation achieving, formation
keeping and formation transforming whilst carrying out a task. Many methodologies
have been proposed to solve these problems, such as implicit polynomial (IP) [EU10],
elliptic Fourier descriptors (EFD) [EU10] and Lyapunov function [LX05] which have
been developed to address the shape dynamics of the ensembles of vehicles.
In this paper, the multi-vehicle formation control problem is solved using the concept
of tensegrity structures. These structures consist of strings (in tension) and bars (in
compression) [SO09], where the strings are attached to the ends of the bars so called as
node. This concept has been borrowed from the field of architectural engineering and
mechanical structures.
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