The Implementation of Consensus Algorithm on a Group of Humanoid Robots with Varying Network Topologies

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to present experiment results on the implementation of consensus algorithm on a group of humanoid robots. The experiment in this work is based on some previous works on distributed control of robotic networks and distributed consensus in multi-vehicle cooperative control. According to Ren, a consensus may occur if communication topology between the robots forms a spanning tree. The existence of some shared informations is a necessary condition for this algorithm. Further, a consensus may occur if the topology of communication among the robots forms a spanning tree. However, to apply the algorithm on a group of humanoid robots we need some modification on the original algorithm. A new algorithm is proposed by adding a new damping variable (β) on original algorithm to make a group of humanoid robots move synchronously. The experiment of the new consensus algorithm is tested on two topologies, which are leader-follower and leaderless topology. This research concludes that consensus in a group of humanoid robot can be achieved by inducing damping variable in original equation.