A loosely-coupled approach for multi-robot coordination, motion planning and control

Federico Pecora, Henrik Andreasson, Masoumeh Mansouri, Vilian Petkov

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

11 Citations (Scopus)
57 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Deploying fleets of autonomous robots in real-world applications requires addressing three problems: motion planning, coordination, and control. Application-specific features of the environment and robots often narrow down the possible motion planning and control methods that can be used. This paper proposes a lightweight coordination method that implements a high-level controller for a fleet of potentially heterogeneous robots. Very few assumptions are made on robot controllers, which are required only to be able to accept set point updates and to report their current state. The approach can be used with any motion planning method for computing kinematically-feasible paths. Coordination uses heuristics to update priorities while robots are in motion, and a simple model of robot dynamics to guarantee dynamic feasibility. The approach avoids a priori discretization of the environment or of robot paths, allowing robots to "follow each other" through critical sections. We validate the method formally and experimentally with different motion planners and robot controllers, in simulation and with real robots.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationTwenty-Eighth International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS 2018)
EditorsM. de Weerdt, S. Koenig, S. Roeger, M. Spaan
PublisherAAAI Press
Pages485-493
ISBN (Electronic)9781577357971
Publication statusPublished - 24 Jun 2018
EventTwenty-Eighth International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS 2018) - Delft, Netherlands
Duration: 24 Jun 201829 Jun 2018

Publication series

NameProceedings of the International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling
PublisherAssociation for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence
ISSN (Electronic)2334-0843

Conference

ConferenceTwenty-Eighth International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS 2018)
Country/TerritoryNetherlands
CityDelft
Period24/06/1829/06/18

Keywords

  • multi-robot coordination
  • motion planning
  • control

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