Safe Circumnavigation on Heterogeneous Orbits: A Range-Only HOCBF-QP Framework for Nonholonomic Multi-Agent Systems
Safe Circumnavigation on Heterogeneous Orbits: A Range-Only HOCBF-QP Framework for Nonholonomic Multi-Agent Systems
This research presents a safety-critical control framework enabling a team of robots with heterogeneous orbital radii to safely circumnavigate a stationary target. The approach relies solely on range measurements to the target and local information exchange between adjacent neighbors in the ring formation. By leveraging structural properties of the system model, a unified control law manages acceleration and turn-rate for all robots regardless of their assigned radius. A higher-order control-barrier-function quadratic program enforces safety constraints on both inputs simultaneously without modifying the nominal controller outside constraint boundaries. Simulations demonstrate that this method maintains target standoff distances and inter-robot margins effectively, outperforming existing multi-orbit designs even when those designs have access to full state information.
The paper proposes a safety-critical control framework for heterogeneous multi-agent systems that circumnavigate a stationary target using only range measurements and local neighbor communication, validated via simulations showing improved adherence to standoff and collision-avoidance constraints compared to existing designs.
Source: arXiv Robotics — research abstracts · Read original article ↗
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its target, while the turn-rate balances the formation with the neighbours. Third, a higher-order control-barrier-function quadratic program enforces target, geofence, and inter-robot safety on both inputs at once; it leaves the nominal controller untouched away from the constraints and stays valid while the unmeasured range rate is still being estimated. Simulations confirm these guarantees. In a comparison, the clo
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arXiv:2611.09112v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Circumnavigating a stationary target with a team of robots requires each robot to hold its own standoff distance, to stay evenly spaced from its neighbours, and to avoid collisions with the target and with each other at every instant. The task becomes arduous when the robots are assigned different orbital radii, as their sensors or roles may demand. This paper presents
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sest existing multi-orbit design, even with full state information, violates both the target standoff and the inter-robot margin, whereas the proposed controller does not.
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Source：arXiv Robotics — research abstracts · arxiv.org