On the Use of Energy Tanks for Multi-Robot Interconnection

In multi-robot systems passive interconnections among agents are often exploited to achieve a desired and robustly stable cooperative behavior. Nevertheless, the passivity constraint limits the kinds of behaviors that can be achieved. In this paper, we exploit the concept of energy tank for building a novel generalized interconnection that allows to impose any kind of dynamic coupling between two passive systems in a flexible way while preserving the passivity of the overall coupled system. The proposed strategy is validated by simulations and experiments.