• affordances
• multi-agent
• multi-robot control
• swarm robotics

In this thesis, I address the issue of human-swarm interactions by proposing a new set of
affrodances that make a multi-robot system amenable to human control. An affordance,
as defined by Gibson, is a relation between an object and a user, where the object
explicitly allows the user to perform a particular action. The affordances we identify when
controlling a swarm, include stretching the swarm, molding it into a particular shape, splitting
and merging sub-swarms, and mixing of different swarms. The contribution beyond
the formulation of these affordances is the coupling of an image recognition framework
identified by an effective deformable-medium control interface, and the accompanying algorithms
needed to identify the appropriate inputs, and then turn those into decentralized
control laws for the individual robots. As result, the developed human-swarm interaction
methodology is applied to a team of mobile robots.