Fan Wen, Zhenshen Qu and Changhong Wang
The purpose of this paper is to describe how, in order to fulfill the specific missions under some special environments without people participating, a multi‐robot object tracking…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to describe how, in order to fulfill the specific missions under some special environments without people participating, a multi‐robot object tracking and docking systems are designed based on networked control frames.
Design/methodology/approach
In the process of target recognition and tracking, the tracking robot obtains the target robot's position and poses information by means of multi‐sensors, and tracking the target robot uses a data fusion algorithm based on network‐delay. In the phase of docking, the exterior parameters of the CCD camera installed on the tracking robot can be calculated in‐phase by recognizing the coded target in a place on the target robot. Finally, the relative position and pose parameters between the tracking robot and the target robot can be derived using the coordinate rotation parameters.
Findings
The experiment results indicated that the relative position measure error is less than 1.5 percent, and the relative pose measure error less than 1° within 1.5‐10 m. The research results show that the system can actualize object tracing and docking missions accurately and timely.
Research limitations/implications
This paper is devoted to multi‐robot object tracking and docking systems.
Practical implications
The main applications are in the exploration in the seabed, consignment in the workshop, formation of spacecrafts, docking of spacecrafts, and so on.
Originality/value
The system can actualize object tracing and docking missions accurately, and the system is of reliable, real‐time, and robust capabilities. This will aid all developers and researchers to enhance their technicality.