Decentralized reactive control of robotic teams for cooperative sweep coverage of corridor-like environments

A group of non-communicating robots has to organize themselves into the densest possible barrier across the width of an unknown corridor-like scene and to ensure that this barrier moves along the corridor with a pre-specified speed. The robots do not know their total number and cannot distinguish between the partners, every of them determines the relative positions of neighboring objects only within a short range of visibility. A decentralized control law is presented that solves this mission, individually operates at any robot, is common for all of them and reactive, i.e., immediately converts observation data into control in a reflex-like fashion. Scenarios where the team size is increased or decreased, respectively, in the course of operation are also elaborated. The control law is justified via a mathematically rigorous global convergence result for corridors with straight parallel walls, and its performance is confirmed for more general corridors via computer simulation tests.