This paper reports a new hierarchical architecture for modeling autonomous multi-robot systems (MRSs): a nonlinear dynamical opinion process is used to model high-level group choice, and multi-objective behavior optimization is used to model individual decisions. Using previously reported theoretical results, we show it is possible to design the behavior of the MRS by the selection of a relatively small set of parameters. The resulting behavior - both collective actions and individual actions - can be understood intuitively. The approach is entirely decentralized and the communication cost scales by the number of group options, not agents. We demonstrated the effectiveness of this approach using a hypothetical ‘explore-exploit-migrate’ scenario in a two hour field demonstration with eight unmanned surface vessels (USVs). The results from our preliminary field experiment show the collective behavior is robust even with time-varying network topology and agent dropouts.

Deploying autonomous systems in safety critical settings necessitates methods to verify their safety properties. This is challenging because real-world systems may be subject to disturbances that affect their performance, but are unknown a priori. This work develops a safety-verification strategy wherein data is collected online and incorporated into a reachability analysis approach to check in real-time that the system avoids dangerous regions of the state space. Specifically, we employ an optimization-based moving horizon estimator (MHE) to characterize the disturbance affecting the system, which is incorporated into an online reachability calculation. Reachable sets are calculated using a computational graph analysis tool to predict the possible future states of the system and verify that they satisfy safety constraints. We include theoretical arguments proving our approach generates reachable sets that bound the future states of the system, as well as numerical results demonstrating how it can be used for safety verification. Finally, we present results from hardware experiments demonstrating our approach’s ability to perform online reachability calculations for an unmanned surface vehicle subject to currents and actuator failures.

In this paper we report an experimental evaluation of three popular methods for online system identification of unmanned surface vehicles (USVs) which were implemented as an ensemble: certifiably stable shallow recurrent neural network (RNN), adaptive identification (AID), and recursive least squares (RLS). The algorithms were deployed on eight USVs for a total of 30 hours of online estimation. During online training the loss function for the RNN was augmented to include a cost for violating a sufficient condition for the RNN to be stable in the sense of contraction stability. Additionally we described an efficient method to calculate the equilibrium points of the RNN and classify the associated stability properties about these points. We found the AID method had lowest mean absolute error in the online prediction setting, but a weighted ensemble had lower error in offline processing.

This paper addresses the long-standing open problem of observability of mass and inertia plant parameters in the adaptive identification (AID) of second-order nonlinear models of 6 degree-of-freedom rigid-body dynamical systems subject to externally applied forces and moments. Although stable methods for AID of plant parameters for this class of systems, as well numerous approaches to stable model-based direct adaptive trajectory-tracking control of such systems, have been reported, these studies have been unable to prove analytically that the adaptive parameter estimates converge to the true plant parameter values. This paper reports necessary and sufficient conditions for the uniform complete observability (UCO) of 6-DOF plant inertial parameters for a stable adaptive identifier for this class of systems. When the UCO condition is satisfied, the adaptive parameter estimates are shown to converge to the true plant parameter values. To the best of our knowledge this is the first reported proof for this class of systems of UCO of plant parameters and for convergence of adaptive parameter estimates to true parameter values.We also report a numerical simulation study of this AID approach which shows that (a) the UCO condition can be met for fully-actuated plants as well as underactuated plants with the proper choice of control input and (b) convergence of adaptive parameter estimates to the true parameter values. We conjecture that this approach can be extended to include other parameters that appear rigid body plant models including parameters for drag, buoyancy, added mass, bias, and actuators.

This paper reports a method and preliminary evaluation of a novel null-space least-squares parameter identification method for a fully nonlinear second -order 6-degree-of-freedom (DOF) dynamic process model of an underactuated underwater vehicle (UV) for which both the model parameters and the control-input parameters are unknown. This paper further reports the application of the identified plant models in combined underwater communication and navigation (cooperative navigation) of UVs. We report an approach to model identification that simultaneously identifies 6-DOF UV nonlinear plant-model parameters, control-surface parameters, and thruster-model parameters. We believe this approach is suitable for identifying plant model parameters from data obtained in full-scale experimental trials of UVs in controlled motion. The reported approach to nonlinear model identification of UVs is evaluated in simulation studies. The resulting identified UV plant models are further evaluated in simulated cooperative navigation missions of the UV that are representative of high-precision survey missions. To the best of our knowledge, this paper reports the first method to identify 6-DOF UV model parameters, control-surface parameters, and thruster-model parameters simultaneously.