Cooperative transport of objects by multi-robots

Resumo

Coordinated transport of objects by robotic swarms can be advantageous when the object to be trans-
ported is too large and/or too heavy to be effectively handled by a single robot alone. This type of operation

requires coordination and synchronization of the pushing forces, which are to be exerted by the robots in order for
the object to be transported successfully. In this paper, a new algorithm called Cooperative Object Transport is
proposed. The algorithm has four stages. The first stage implements the object search done by the swarm robots.
The second stage of the algorithm starts when a robot finds the object. It then recruits the other robots. During
the third stage, each robot first computes and then goes towards the location where it must position itself around
the object to cooperate in the pushing actions required for executing the transport properly. When the positioning
of all robots around the object is completed, the fourth stage of the algorithm begins. From then on, the robots
start alternating between pushing and re-positioning actions in order to keep the object moving along the expected
transport trajectory. This procedure is executed until the object is actually homed. In this work, the implementation
of the object search stage is inspired by the strategy used by ant colonies during their foraging for food sources,
depositing pheromones along the traversed paths. The proposed algorithm is implemented in GRITSBot swarm
robots, using Robotarium. We evaluate the impact of ant foraging strategy on the overall collective transport task
in swarm robotics, comparing it to a random object-seeking strategy. The achieved results prove that the proposed
algorithm is effective yet efficient in finding the shortest path while looking for an object. This allows for an
efficient execution of the transport stage of the sought object from its original location to the intended warehouse.