Coordinated control of multiple terrain mapping UGVs

A coordinated control scheme is developed for a team of autonomous Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGVs) engaged in outdoor terrain mapping. It is based on a systems- and control-oriented enhancement of the "intelligent agent" paradigm which we call the Hybrid Intelligent Control Agent (HICA). HICA essentially embeds a hybrid control system in an intelligent agent. It is used as a conceptual basis for the synthesis of coordinated controllers for certain classes of distributed multi-mode dynamical processes. In the formulation, each vehicle is modelled as a HICA with its own embedded hybrid control primitives and planning/coordination logic. The scheme is demonstrated experimentally.