Modeling and verification of distributed control scheme for mobile robots

In this report we present a sensor-based distributed control scheme for mobile robots. This scheme combines centralized and decentralized control strategies. Each group of sensors is considered to be a process that performs sensing and carries out local control tasks as well. Besides these processes, there is a central controller that carries out global goals utilizing sensor readings on a need to know bases. In this scheme, the sensors communicate with the central controller, and also may communicate with each other. Communication protocols has been defined and an abstract model for the proposed control scheme was built. Formal verification techniques were used to verify the correctness of these protocols as well as some desired properties of the proposed scheme. The advantages of this scheme over the centralized scheme is that it increases system modularity and flexibility and provides graceful degradation in case of failure of some of the sensors. The results of verifying and simulating this model are presented with a brief discussion and conclusion on these results.