Multi-robot Implicit Control of Massive Herds

Abstract: This paper solves the problem of herding countless evaders by means of a few robots. The objective is to steer all the evaders towards a desired tracking reference while avoiding escapes. The problem is very challenging due to the highly complex repulsive evaders' dynamics and the underdetermined states to control. We propose a solution that is based on Implicit Control and a novel dynamic assignment strategy to select the evaders to be directly controlled. The former is a general technique that explicitly computes control inputs even in highly complex input-nonaffine dynamics. The latter is built upon a convex-hull dynamic clustering inspired by the Voronoi tessellation problem. The combination of both allows to choose the best evaders to directly control, while the others are indirectly controlled by exploiting the repulsive interactions among them. Simulations show that massive herds can be herd throughout complex patterns by means of a few herders.