A testbed for control schemes using multi agent nonholonomic robots

Multi agent robots performing tasks together have significant advantages over a single robot. Applications of multi agent robots can be found in the fields of tele-surgery, hazardous waste cleanup, mine and ores detection and harvesting of agriculture fields. This paper presents the control analysis and develops a testbed to simulate different feedback control strategies using multi agent nonholonomic robots. Each multi agent robot communicate with other robots using Bluetooth piconet. The multi agent robot system is modeled in Simulink and simulation results are presented. The nonlinear feedback control strategy improves the system performance by minimizing the mean of the error. Furthermore, the nonlinear strategy globally asymptotically stabilizes the system using Lyapunov stability theory compared to the linear feedback strategy. The work presented here is an initial study concerning the design of feedback controllers for multi agent nonholonomic robots. ©2007 IEEE.