Controlling a team of robots with a single input

Abstract

We present a novel end-to-end solution for distributed multirobot coordination that translates multitouch gestures into low-level control inputs for teams of robots. Highlighting the need for a holistic solution to the problem of scalable human control of multirobot teams, we present a novel control algorithm with provable guarantees on the robots' motion that lends itself well to input from modern tablet and smartphone interfaces. Concretely, we develop an iOS application in which the user is presented with a team of robots and a bounding box (prism). The user carefully translates and scales the prism in a virtual environment; these prism coordinates are wirelessly transferred to our server and then received as input to distributed onboard robot controllers. We develop a novel distributed multirobot control policy which provides guarantees on convergence to a goal with distance bounded linearly in the number of robots, and avoids interrobot collisions. This approach allows the human user to solve the cognitive tasks such as path planning, while leaving precise motion to the robots. Our system was tested in simulation and experiments, demonstrating its utility and effectiveness.