coordinated selection and timing of multiple trajectories of discretely mobile robots

Abstract The paper addresses the multi-agent path planning (MPP) of mobile agents with multiple goals taking into consideration the kinematic constraints of each agent. The "Swing and Dock" (SaD) robotic system being discussed uses discrete locomotion, where agents swing around fixed pins and dock with their mounting legs to realize displacement from one point to another. The system was developed as a subsystem for mobile robotic fixture (SwarmItFix). Previous work dealt with MPP for SaD agents using the concept of extended temporal graph with Integer Linear Programming (ILP) based formulations. The approach discretized time into unit steps, whereas in reality, the agents are constrained by velocity limits. Hence, a real-time schedule is required to accurately plan the agent movement in a working scenario. We utilize the concept of simple temporal network and extend our ILP formulations to model the velocity kinematic constraints. The mathematical formulations are implemented and tested using a GUROBI solver. Computational results display the effectiveness of the approach

Sampling-based Multi-robot Motion Planning

International audienceThis paper describes a sampling-based approach to multi-robot motion planning. The proposed approach is centralized, which aims to reduce interference between mobile robots such as collision, congestion and deadlock, by increasing the number of waypoints. The implementation based on occupancy grid map is decomposed into three steps: the first step is to identify primary waypoints by using the Voronoi diagram, the second step is to generate additional waypoints by sampling the Voronoi diagram, and the last step is to assign the waypoints to robots by using the Hungarian method. The approach has been implemented and tested in simulation and the experimental results show a good system performance for multi-robot motion planning