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Analysis and Control Software for Distributed Cooperative Systems

Introduction

As part of a project for DARPA's ITO Software for Distributed Robotics (SDR) Program, Sandia National Laboratories is developing analysis and control software for coordinating hundreds to thousands of autonomous cooperative robotic agents (both ground and air vehicles) performing military operations such as reconnaissance, surveillance and target acquisition; countermine and explosive ordnance disposal; force protection and physical security; and logistics support.  Due to the nature of these applications, the control techniques must be distributed, and they must not rely on high bandwidth communication between agents.  At the same time, a single soldier must easily direct these large-scale systems.  Finally, the control techniques must be provably convergent so as not to cause undo harm to civilians.  In this project, we are developing provably convergent, low communication bandwidth, distributed control algorithms that can be regulated by a single soldier.

The focus of this first year has been on a surveillance task where large numbers of vehicles (from 20 to 1000) are dispersed around a facility.  The goal is for these vehicles to autonomously create a distributed communication/navigation network that links a remote base station to multiple surveillance points.

Recent Progress

Recently, we have made progress in four areas:

1. Stability analysis of linearly coupled, strongly connected, robotic vehicles
2. Simulations of 20 vehicles forming a communication/navigation network
3. Simulations of 1000 vehicles using particle physics codes
4. Development of 20 networked robot vehicles for hardware testing

For more information contact:

John Feddema
Intelligent Systems & Robotics Center
Sandia National Laboratories
P.O. Box 5800  MS 1003
Albuquerque, NM 87185-1003
(505)844-0827
email: jtfedde@sandia.gov