GROUP ROBOT AND POPULATION MOVEMENT CONTROL METHOD FOR GROUP ROBOT

摘要

Provided are: a group robot in which autonomous distributed control and centralized control are combined according to an environment; and a population movement control method for the group robot. In a group robot (100) comprising at least two robots that have motive power and that move and travel autonomously: information about positions and speeds of the robots and an object (500) present in an area where the robots are movable is acquired; a virtual object temperature is set beforehand for the object, a virtual initial robot temperature that is lower than the virtual object temperature is set beforehand for the robots; and a changed virtual robot temperature caused due to virtual heat transfer is calculated on the basis of the virtual object temperature, the virtual initial robot temperature, and distances between the robots and the object. By using a thermodynamic mathematical model, virtual attractive/repulsive force for keeping the distance between the robots constant are calculated on the basis of the distance between the robots, and a virtual repulsive force applied between the robots and the object is calculated on the basis of the virtual robot temperature. The moving directions and the speeds of the robots are controlled on the basis of the sum total of the attractive/repulsive force and the repulsive force.