Design of Decentralized Capturing Behavior by Multiple Mobile Robots

This paper discusses the design of decentralized capturing behavior by multiple mobile robots. The design is based on a gradient descent method with local information. The task of capturing a target is divided into two problems, enclosing behavior and grasping behavior. We give analysis on convergence of the local control policy in enclosing problem. In grasping behavior, we consider the forceclosure condition in decentralized form for designing a local objective function. The proposed local control policies were evaluated in simulations, where the flexibility of the system was verified caused by the decentralized nature of the system.