Coordinated Motion Planning for Multiple Mobile Robots Along Designed Paths With Formation Requirement

This paper presents a motion-planning approach for coordinating multiple mobile robots in moving along specified paths. The robots are required to fulfill formation requirements while meeting velocity/acceleration constraints and avoiding collisions. Coordination is achieved by planning robot velocities along the paths through a velocity-optimization process. An objective function for minimizing formation errors is established and solved by a linear interactive and general optimizer. Motion planning can be further adjusted online to address emergent demands such as avoiding suddenly appearing obstacles. Simulations and experiments are performed on a group of mobile robots to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed coordinated motion planning in multirobot formations.

[1]  S. Goddard,et al.  Localization and follow-the-leader control of a heterogeneous group of mobile robots , 2006, IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics.

[2]  Naomi Ehrich Leonard,et al.  Cooperative Filters and Control for Cooperative Exploration , 2010, IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control.

[3]  C.W. de Silva,et al.  Sequential $Q$ -Learning With Kalman Filtering for Multirobot Cooperative Transportation , 2010, IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics.

[4]  Hongyan Wang,et al.  Social potential fields: A distributed behavioral control for autonomous robots , 1995, Robotics Auton. Syst..

[5]  Srinivas Akella,et al.  Coordinating Multiple Robots with Kinodynamic Constraints Along Specified Paths , 2005, Int. J. Robotics Res..

[6]  Jie Yang,et al.  Localization for Multirobot Formations in Indoor Environment , 2010, IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics.

[7]  Moshe Kam,et al.  Multi-vehicle path coordination in support of communication , 2009, 2009 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

[8]  Naomi Ehrich Leonard,et al.  Virtual leaders, artificial potentials and coordinated control of groups , 2001, Proceedings of the 40th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (Cat. No.01CH37228).

[9]  Seth Copen Goldstein,et al.  Distributed Localization of Modular Robot Ensembles , 2008, Robotics: Science and Systems.

[10]  Dong Sun,et al.  Cooperation Strategy of Unmanned Air Vehicles for Multitarget Interception , 2005 .

[11]  Tucker R. Balch,et al.  Behavior-based formation control for multirobot teams , 1998, IEEE Trans. Robotics Autom..

[12]  Thierry Siméon,et al.  Path coordination for multiple mobile robots: a resolution-complete algorithm , 2002, IEEE Trans. Robotics Autom..

[13]  Antonio Bicchi,et al.  On optimal cooperative conflict resolution for air traffic management systems , 2000, IEEE Trans. Intell. Transp. Syst..

[14]  Jian Chen,et al.  Leader-Follower Formation Control of Multiple Non-holonomic Mobile Robots Incorporating a Receding-horizon Scheme , 2010, Int. J. Robotics Res..

[15]  I. Mas,et al.  Cluster Space Specification and Control of Mobile Multirobot Systems , 2009, IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics.

[16]  Jie Yang,et al.  Global localization of multirobot formations using ceiling vision SLAM strategy , 2007, 2007 14th International Conference on Mechatronics and Machine Vision in Practice.

[17]  Sonia Martínez,et al.  Unicycle Coverage Control Via Hybrid Modeling , 2010, IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control.

[18]  Mark H. Overmars,et al.  Coordinated path planning for multiple robots , 1998, Robotics Auton. Syst..

[19]  Seth Hutchinson,et al.  Path planning for permutation-invariant multirobot formations , 2005, IEEE Transactions on Robotics.

[20]  Ümit Özgüner,et al.  Motion planning for multitarget surveillance with mobile sensor agents , 2005, IEEE Transactions on Robotics.

[21]  Steven M. LaValle,et al.  Optimal motion planning for multiple robots having independent goals , 1998, IEEE Trans. Robotics Autom..

[22]  Dongbing Gu,et al.  Leader–Follower Flocking: Algorithms and Experiments , 2009, IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology.

[23]  Dong Sun,et al.  A dynamic priority strategy in decentralized motion planning for formation forming of multiple mobile robots , 2009, 2009 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems.

[24]  A.C. Larson,et al.  TerminatorBot: a novel robot with dual-use mechanism for locomotion and manipulation , 2005, IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics.

[25]  Cristian Secchi,et al.  Coordination of multiple AGVs in an industrial application , 2008, 2008 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

[26]  G. Oriolo,et al.  The Sensor-based Random Graph Method for Cooperative Robot Exploration , 2009, IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics.

[27]  Gang Feng,et al.  A Synchronization Approach to Trajectory Tracking of Multiple Mobile Robots While Maintaining Time-Varying Formations , 2009, IEEE Transactions on Robotics.

[28]  Steve Goddard,et al.  Localization and follow-the-leader control of a heterogeneous group of mobile robots , 2006 .

[29]  Brian W. Kernighan,et al.  AMPL: A Modeling Language for Mathematical Programming , 1993 .

[30]  Dong Sun,et al.  Model identification of a micro air vehicle in loitering flight based on attitude performance evaluation , 2004, IEEE Transactions on Robotics.

[31]  Thierry Fraichard,et al.  Navigating dynamic environments using trajectory deformation , 2008, 2008 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems.