Robotics: Science and Systems XVI

Probabilistic Swarm Guidance Subject to Graph Temporal Logic Specifications

Franck Djeumou, Zhe Xu, Ufuk Topcu

Abstract:

As the number of agents comprising a swarm increases, individual-agent-based control techniques for collective task completion become computationally intractable. We study a setting in which the agents move along the nodes of a graph, and the high-level task specifications for the swarm are expressed in a recently proposed language called graph temporal logic (GTL). By constraining the distribution of the swarm over the nodes of the graph, GTL specifies a wide range of properties, including safety, progress, and response. In contrast to the individual-agent-based control techniques, we develop an algorithm to control, in a decentralized and probabilistic manner, a collective property of the swarm: its density distribution. The algorithm, agnostic to the number of agents in the swarm, synthesizes a time-varying Markov chain modeling the time evolution of the density distribution of a swarm subject to GTL. We first formulate the synthesis of such a Markov chain as a mixed-integer nonlinear program (MINLP). Then, to address the intractability of MINLPs, we present an iterative scheme alternating between two relaxations of the MINLP: a linear program and a mixed-integer linear program. We evaluate the algorithm in several scenarios, including a rescue mission in a high-fidelity ROS-Gazebo simulation.

Download:

Bibtex:

  
@INPROCEEDINGS{Djeumou-RSS-20, 
    AUTHOR    = {Franck Djeumou AND Zhe Xu AND Ufuk Topcu}, 
    TITLE     = {{Probabilistic Swarm Guidance Subject to Graph Temporal Logic Specifications}}, 
    BOOKTITLE = {Proceedings of Robotics: Science and Systems}, 
    YEAR      = {2020}, 
    ADDRESS   = {Corvalis, Oregon, USA}, 
    MONTH     = {July}, 
    DOI       = {10.15607/RSS.2020.XVI.058} 
}