Safe and Adaptive Multi-Target Encirclement With Socially Aware Multi-Robot Control
Khaoula Chaib, Mohammad Alkhatib, Nouara Achour, Miguel Aranda, Laurent Lequievre, Youcef Mezouar, Mustapha Hamerlain
Abstract
This paper addresses the problem of surrounding and tracking dynamic groups of moving targets with unknown velocities using a team of mobile robots. We introduce a control strategy for multi-robot systems that continuously maintains a safety distance between each robot and the convex hull of the target group. In particular, these safety distances are defined based on social constraints, and the proposed control strategy enforces them while simultaneously maintaining a balanced geometric distribution. The stability of the distribution is studied formally and the effectiveness of the proposed method is validated through numerical simulations and real-world tests using unicycle-model robots. The results show that the method provides suitable performance in dynamic scenarios, and it exhibits higher safety and adaptability than alternative approaches.
BibTeX
@inproceedings{ral2026_safeandadaptivem,
title = {Safe and Adaptive Multi-Target Encirclement With Socially Aware Multi-Robot Control},
author = {Khaoula Chaib and Mohammad Alkhatib and Nouara Achour and Miguel Aranda and Laurent Lequievre and Youcef Mezouar and Mustapha Hamerlain},
booktitle = {RA-L 2026},
year = {2026}
}