Group Behavior on Emergency Mode Transferring in Autonomous Multi-Robot Systems with Subgroups

On realizing group behaviors of an autonomous multi-robot system, designing local interaction among autonomous robots in groups is one of the key research issues. Not limiting maintaining stable group formation, transferring some emergency mode rapidly in a large group is another important group behavior mimicking a swarm of fishes or birds. In this paper, we proposed a mechanism for group emergency stopping in multi-mobile robot system, which is based on motion control of multi-lane highway traffic. Swarm effects of emergency mode transferring for cases with individual urgent stopping source and common urgent stop source are addressed, and simulation-based analysis are provided for illustrating the validity of group emergency stop mechanism and analyzing the swarm effects with subgroups. Additionally, an Attention Mode and its implementation mechanism is proposed for enhancing the swarm effects while urgent stopping source happens in different timing to different subgroup.