Maximizing mobility: Distributed controllers of a Segway swarm for autonomous navigation in smart city environments.

Abstract

The advancement of autonomous multi-robot systems is critical for addressing the mobility challenges within modern smart city environments. Distributed, acceleration-based controllers are designed and mathematically validated for a Segway swarm navigating cluttered, time-varying urban settings. A Lyapunov-based Control Scheme (LbCS) is utilized to develop a potential function governing collective swarm behavior. This function ensures target convergence, enforces formation cohesion, and prevents inter-agent collisions. It also dictates safe navigation around static geometric constraints (modeled as disks and lines) and the evasion of independent dynamic obstacles. System stability is formally proven, demonstrating asymptotic controllability and convergence to the desired equilibrium state. Numerical simulations verify the framework's performance across four distinct scenarios, highlighting emergent reactive behaviors to moving entities. These results establish control strategies for the safe collective operation of non-holonomic robots, providing a theoretical foundation for future prototype development in smart city applications.