Experimental study of consensus algorithm on a group of humanoid robots

Abstract

Synchronized motion of robot arms can be achieved by consensus algorithm. This paper presents the design of hardware experimental platform to implement consensus algorithm on a group of humanoid robot. Some experiments have been conducted under various interaction topologies to explore issues and challenges in the field of distributed multi-robot cooperative control. Distributed consensus algorithms are applied to synchronize the arm’s movement of some robots. In this synchronization task, a group of robot will perform some identical movements in unison. Consensus algorithm mainly used in this paper has been proposed by Wei Ren et al. The hardware experimental platform is inspired by the works of Benedetti et al. Some experiment results using this platform show that the consensus algorithm is effective and robust even in a condition in which the robots have various different initial position values.