Ensemble Control of Robots with Unicycle Kinematics
Ensemble Control of Robots with Unicycle Kinematics
What can you do with multiple remote-control robots all slaved to one remote control? This Demonstration shows you can steer all the robots (represented by colored circles with a line indicating heading) to any desired final position (colored disks). This is possible because of noise: each time the robots are commanded to turn, every robot turns a slightly different amount. You can use these differences to slowly push the robots to goal positions, using the plot on the right for guidance. Research in this area is motivated by real-world challenges in micro- and nanorobotics, where often all the robots are steered by the same control signal.