The Caltech Multi-Vehicle Wireless Testbed

• Published in: Proceedings of the 41st IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, 2002 Vol. 1; pp. 86 - 88 vol.1
• Main Authors: Cremean, L., Dunbar, W.B., van Gogh, D., Hickey, J., Klavins, E., Meltzer, J., Murray, R.M.
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE 2002
• Subjects: Distributed control; Ethernet networks; Fans; Feedback; Machine vision; Mobile communication; Real time systems; System testing; Vehicle dynamics; Wireless communication
• ISBN: 0780375165; 9780780375161
• ISSN: 0191-2216
• DOI: 10.1109/CDC.2002.1184472

We introduce the Caltech Multi-Vehicle Wireless Testbed (MVWT), a platform for testing decentralized control methodologies for multiple vehicle coordination and formation stabilization. The testbed consists of eight mobile vehicles, an overhead vision system that provides GPS-like state information and wireless Ethernet for communications. Each vehicle rests on omni-directional casters and is powered by two high-performance ducted fans. Thus, a unique feature of our testbed is that the vehicles have second order dynamics, requiring real-time feedback algorithms to stabilize the system while performing cooperative tasks. The testbed will be used by various research groups at Caltech and elsewhere to validate theoretical advances in multi-vehicle coordination and control, networked control systems, real-time networking and high confidence distributed computation.