A Coordinated Navigation Strategy for Multi-Robots to Capture a Target Moving with Unknown Speed

The paper proposes an algorithm for multi-robot coordination and navigation in order to intercept a target at a long distance. For this purpose, a limit cycle based algorithm using a neural oscillator with phase differences is proposed. The state of target is unknown, under the assumption that it is stationary or in motion with constant unknown speed along a straight line. Using the proposed algorithm, a group of robots is intended to move towards the target in such a way that the robots surround it. While moving to the target, self-collision between the robots is avoided. Moreover, a collision avoidance with static obstacles as well as dynamic target is realized. The robots reach the target at a desired distance, keeping uniformly distributed angles around the target. The algorithm is further extended so that a static interception point for the target can be estimated in place of pursuing a dynamic target, which is referred to as a virtual target in this paper. In other words, the robots move towards the virtual target instead of the actual target. The robots ultimately encircle the actual target when they arrive at the virtual target. The effectiveness of the proposed method is verified through simulation results.