Task priority approach for solving coordination of moving mobile robot in SAR operations

This work describes the application of the Null Space Behavioral technique for the coordinated control of a team of heterogeneous vehicles (quadcopters and tracked ground vehicles) in the presence of obstacles and forbidden zones. This work is part of the ChemSys PRIN PNRR project, in which a heterogeneous team of mobile robots is planned for SAR missions. To solve the problem of coordinated movement of robots in this work, a prioritized approach, the so-called Null Space Based Behavioral Approach, is considered. Specifically, this means that each vehicle is assigned an operational mission in the form of a target region to be reached. The mission is divided into a series of tasks with an assigned priority. The tasks of formation flying and collision avoidance with other vehicles and unknown or moving obstacles are formulated by analytical expressions, as required by the classical null-space behavioral approach. The behavior when approaching the target and avoiding known obstacles is determined by solving a partial differential equation problem within an operational domain. The effectiveness of the proposed technique and the evaluation of possible limitations is discussed on the basis of experimental tests carried out at the Control Systems Laboratory of the Mediterranean University of Reggio Calabria.