arXiv subjects

Nicola De Carli

Publications and source records attributed to Nicola De Carli.

8 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Multi-Agent Transportation of Free-Flyers in Microgravity Via Pushing Interaction Under Human-in-the-Loop Control

We propose a safety-critical framework for the cooperative transportation of passive targets in microgravity, where a team of chaser robots acts through unilateral pushing contacts to track a human-provided desired twist while ensuring safe target motion. The pushing-only nature of the interaction introduces sparse, configuration-dependent actuation constraints requiring chasers to physically relocate on the target body when the desired pushing allocation changes. To address these challenges, we formulate a delay-aware feedback control architecture leveraging Control Lyapunov Function (CLF) and Control Barrier Function (CBF) constraints within a mixed-integer thrust allocation program to enforce stability and safety of the target, respectively. The proposed framework enables reference tracking while guaranteeing obstacle avoidance with a circular obstacle despite intermittent control authority, providing a foundation for human-supervised cooperative transportation of free-flyers in space environments. The proposed framework is validated through Gazebo simulations.

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arXiv2026

Safe Formation Control of Open Multi-Robot Systems with Connectivity-Preserving Reconfiguration

We address the formation control problem for open multi-robot systems (OMRS), i.e., systems in which robots may join or leave the team during operation and new interaction links are established over time, subject to inter-robot collision-avoidance and connectivity-maintenance constraints. The robots are modeled by double integrators, and interact over a dynamic undirected graph. We design a distributed controller based on the gradient of a barrier-Lyapunov function. To enable team reconfiguration, we introduce a formation manager that coordinates robot additions and removals and establishes prospective edges whenever needed, either to connect a joining robot to the team or to preserve connectivity before a robot departs. The upper-distance constraints of prospective edges are temporarily relaxed through auxiliary dynamics that preserve feasibility while progressively recovering the nominal interaction range. The resulting open-team dynamics are modeled as a switched system, for which we establish uniform practical stability for almost all initial conditions under a transition-dependent average dwell-time condition. Finally, the proposed approach is validated in realistic Gazebo simulations with dynamically simulated quadrotors undergoing repeated joining and departure maneuvers.

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arXiv2026

Vision-based Underwater Formation Control With Input Saturations via Barrier Lyapunov Functions

In this work, we propose a communication-free framework for vision-based formation control of fully actuated underwater robots subject to sensing constraints, collision-avoidance requirements, and input saturations. Recentered barrier Lyapunov functions encode sensing and collision-avoidance constraints, while command-filtered backstepping extends the design to the second-order vehicle dynamics. The resulting control objective is enforced through a quadratic program that explicitly accounts for actuator limits. Conservative sensing domains provide margins from the physical limits and are adaptively relaxed when necessary, allowing temporary violation of the conservative bounds. The proposed approach is validated through realistic Software-in-the-Loop (SITL) simulations in Gazebo.

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arXiv2026

Demonstration of Space Robot Teleoperation over a Lossy and Delayed Network using ATMOS

We present a demonstration showcasing the Autonomy Testbed for Multi-purpose Orbiting Systems (ATMOS), a planar spacecraft-analog robot designed for hardware-in-the-loop evaluation of guidance and control strategies in microgravity-like conditions. Using ATMOS as the physical test platform, we investigate the design, analysis, and performance evaluation of control architectures for remotely operated spacecraft under round-trip communication delays. In this work, we develop and experimentally validate a control strategy that combines state prediction and trajectory tracking control to perform a docking maneuver, accounting for time-varying random communication latency between ground operators and the ATMOS system. The demonstration includes a long-distance remote control experiment between Seoul and Stockholm, introducing realistic intercontinental delays and variability. The results highlight the capability of ATMOS to support rapid, reliable, and cost-effective testing of spacecraft teleoperation concepts, establishing a first step toward robust validation of on-orbit operations in microgravity-like environments.

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arXiv2026

STL-GCS: A Planner-Controller Framework for Signal Temporal Logic via Graphs of Time-varying Convex Sets

We present a unified trajectory planning and control framework for the satisfaction of Signal Temporal Logic (STL) specifications defined over convex predicates. At the planning layer, STL tasks are encoded as time-varying convex sets in configuration space, specifically designed so that forward invariance of the system with respect to these sets implies satisfaction of the specification with a prescribed robustness margin. This representation is then lifted to the joint time--configuration space and combined with the Graphs of Convex Sets (GCS) framework, yielding a shortest-path formulation of the planning problem over convex spatio-temporal sets. Trajectories are parameterized by B-splines, which enable continuous-time enforcement of STL satisfaction, collision avoidance, and smoothness constraints. At the control layer, the same time-varying sets used for planning are exploited to design a feedback controller that tracks the planned trajectory while prioritizing satisfaction of the STL specification during execution in the presence of tracking errors and model mismatch. We validate the proposed approach in simulation and in real-world experiments on space robotic platforms.

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arXiv2026

Marinarium: A Modular Experimental Facility for Reproducible Maritime and Space-Analog Field Robotics

Field robotics research in maritime and space domains is constrained by a persistent gap between low-cost, low-fidelity simulation and costly offshore experimentation. Instrumented water tanks partially bridge this gap but often provide limited sensing, restricted experimental capabilities, and weak integration with simulation tools. To address these limitations, we present Marinarium, a modular, standalone experimental facility that provides a cost-effective intermediate testbed between simulation and field deployment. Marinarium combines a fully instrumented underwater and aerial operational volume with motion capture (MoCap), a retractable roof enabling both sheltered and open-air operation, a digital twin implemented in SMaRCSim, and direct integration with a planar space robotics laboratory, enabling both maritime and underwater space-analog experimentation. We present the design rationale of the facility and validate its capabilities through four representative studies in field robotics: (i) data-driven system identification of underwater vehicle dynamics; (ii) heterogeneous multi-domain robotic rendezvous; (iii) sim-to-real transfer for underwater robotics using learned dynamics residuals; and (iv) cross-domain validation of spacecraft autonomy using underwater surrogates. Together, these studies demonstrate that Marinarium enables reproducible, instrumented experimentation across multiple field robotics challenges that would otherwise require costly offshore deployments or be impractical to investigate using simulation alone.

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arXiv2026

ADMM-Based Distributed Kalman-like Observer with Applications to Cooperative Localization

This paper addresses distributed state estimation for multi-agent systems with local and relative measurements, motivated by cooperative localization problems in which the global state dimension scales with the size of the network. We consider a Kalman-like observer in information form and introduce a sparsity-preserving prediction step based on an exponential forgetting factor, thereby avoiding the dense Riccati recursion of the standard information filter. The correction step is recast as a strongly convex quadratic program with structure induced by the sensing graph, which enables a distributed solution based on the alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM). In the resulting scheme, each agent updates local copies of its own correction variable and those of its neighbors using only local communication, thus avoiding centralized matrix inversion and consensus over full global-state quantities. A two-time-scale stability analysis is developed for the interconnected observer: the reduced estimation-error dynamics are shown to be uniformly exponentially stable, the ADMM dynamics define an exponentially stable fast subsystem, and these properties are combined to establish uniform exponential stability of the overall distributed observer. Numerical simulations in a multi-agent cooperative localization scenario illustrate the performance of the proposed distributed observer.

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arXiv2026

Validation of Space Robotics in Underwater Environments via Disturbance Robustness Equivalency

We present an experimental validation framework for space robotics that leverages underwater environments to approximate microgravity dynamics. While neutral buoyancy conditions make underwater robotics an excellent platform for space robotics validation, there are still dynamical and environmental differences that need to be overcome. Given a high-level space mission specification, expressed in terms of a Signal Temporal Logic specification, we overcome these differences via the notion of maximal disturbance robustness of the mission. We formulate the motion planning problem such that the original space mission and the validation mission achieve the same disturbance robustness degree. The validation platform then executes its mission plan using a near-identical control strategy to the space mission where the closed-loop controller considers the spacecraft dynamics. Evaluating our validation framework relies on estimating disturbances during execution and comparing them to the disturbance robustness degree, providing practical evidence of operation in the space environment. Our evaluation features a dual-experiment setup: an underwater robot operating under near-neutral buoyancy conditions to validate the planning and control strategy of either an experimental planar spacecraft platform or a CubeSat in a high-fidelity space dynamics simulator.

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