@article {141,
	title = {Bilateral Teleoperation of Groups of Mobile Robots with Time-Varying Topology},
	journal = {IEEE Transaction on Robotics},
	volume = {28},
	year = {2012},
	month = {10/2012},
	pages = {1019	-1033},
	abstract = {In this paper, a novel decentralized control strategy for bilaterally teleoperating heterogeneous groups of mobile robots from different domains (aerial, ground, marine and under- water) is proposed. By using a decentralized control architecture, the group of robots, treated as the slave-side, is made able to navigate in a cluttered environment while avoiding obstacles, inter-robot collisions and following the human motion commands. Simultaneously, the human operator acting on the master side is provided with a suitable force feedback informative of the group response and of the interaction with the surrounding environment. Using passivity based techniques, we allow the behavior of the group to be as flexible as possible with arbitrary split and join events (e.g., due to inter-robot visibility/packet losses or specific task requirements) while guaranteeing the stability of the system. We provide a rigorous analysis of the system stability and steady-state characteristics, and validate performance through human/hardware-in-the-tloop simulations by considering a heterogeneous fleet of UAVs and UGVs as case study. Finally, we also provide an experimental validation with 4 quadrotor UAV},
	keywords = {Bilateral Shared Control of Mobile Robots, Decentralized control, Distributed algorithms, Force feedback, Haptics, Motion control of multiple robots, Multi-robot systems, Teleoperation},
	author = {Antonio Franchi and Cristian Secchi and Hyoung Il Son and Heinrich H. B{\"u}lthoff and Paolo Robuffo Giordano}
}
