Simulation in MATLAB Motion of the Mobile Robots Group When Working in the Industrial-Urban Environment

摘要

The task of control for group of special robots for use in high-risk environments (for example, for extinguishing fires, searching for dangerous substances, or eliminating the consequences of accidents) has been solved. Under the terms of the task, robots operate in an industrial-urban environment, that is, the movement of robots is flat. There were analyzed various strategies of group interaction between robots and literature reviewed. Based on the specifics of the task, a decentralized control strategy was chosen. To solve this problem, an algorithm was proposed for the movement of a group of mobile robots with a subsequent visual check of the operation of the obtained algorithm. The developed algorithm includes the following components: constructing the working environment graph of the robot; determining the shortest distances between the base point of each robot and each target point; distributing targets between robots; checking the absence or preventing collisions between robots; building a global trajectory. The implementation of the algorithm works in the MATLAB environment. Group models are developed in the Simscape Multibody package, which allows you to perform physical modeling of both each robot and the group. To make realistic contact between the surface and the wheels of a mobile robot, the use of the Contact Forces Library add-on is required, which considers all the friction and slip forces. This software package can be used to pre-test the work of a group of robots in the context of the task. As a result of the test, the program and model successfully solve the problem, but the simulation time is high due to the large computational complexity of the model and the novelty of the Contact Forces Library package, which will be updated in future versions of the package.