Analysis of Sheepdog-Type Robot Navigation for Goal-Lost-Situation

Abstract

In the real world, there is a system in which a dog called a sheepdog stimulates part of a flock of sheep that are freely moving to guide them to a goal position. If we consider this system from the perspective of a control problem, it is an interesting control system: one or more sheepdogs, who act as a small number of controllers, are used to indirectly control many sheep that cannot be directly controlled. For this reason, there have been many studies conducted regarding this system; however, these studies have been limited to building numerical models or performing simulation analyses. Very little research has been done on building a working system. The point we wish to emphasise here is that we attempted to build the sheepdog system in as simple a way as possible. For the purpose, we introduce minimal settings for the sheep model and the sheepdog controller. In the process of building and testing an actual system, we noticed "an emergence of blind zone" because the robots possess size, or so-called cases where the objects in the blind zone cannot be observed because the object is in front. Using the existing method, as the number of sheep increases, it becomes impossible to perceive the goal position, i.e., emerge the goal-lost-situation. This results in the guidance task becoming impossible. As clear identification of the goal position is vital for guidance, we propose a method for cases in which the goal position is invisible. Using our method, the robot appropriately selects another object, and sets this object as the new target. We have confirmed through simulations that the proposed method can maintain guidance regardless of the number of sheep.

Design of Mobile Control for Multiple Agents Inspired by Sheepdog Shepherding and its Verification

“…や理論 解析 [18]，実機検証などさまざまな先行研究 [11,[16][17][18] がある．Vaughan らは「ヒツジ同士は群れる」， 「ヒツジ [記法] R は実数の集合，Z は整数の集合，N は自然数 のもとで牧羊犬とヒツジ群の重心との距離の収束値は，…”

Occlusion-Based Coordination Protocol Design for Autonomous Robotic Shepherding Tasks

“…Another study on the shepherding problem [18] proposed a controller that used no arithmetic computation or memory, to manoeuvre mobile e-puck robots in simulation. In [19], sheepdog style navigation was analyzed for cases in which the goal position was invisible. A biologically-inspired control law for a shepherding task was also proposed in [20] to achieve an arc formation to control the flock effectively.…”

The Limits of Reactive Shepherding Approaches for Swarm Guidance

“…Throughout the literature, there is a great deal of variations in how a shepherding task is judged complete. The shepherding goal can be an object [16], a defined area [17], a pen with a gate [18] or simply a selected corner of the movement zone [8]. Another variation is in the complexity of the environment, i.e.…”