Authors:
Bernd Brüeggemann
1
;
Elmar Langetepe
2
;
Andreas Lenerz
2
and
Dirk Schulz
3
Affiliations:
1
Fraunhofer FKIE, Germany
;
2
University of Bonn, Germany
;
3
Fraunhofer Institute for Communication and Information Processing and Ergonomics, Germany
Keyword(s):
Multi-robot Systems, Planning, Plan Execution, Coordination, Algorithmic Geometry.
Related
Ontology
Subjects/Areas/Topics:
Artificial Intelligence
;
Formal Methods
;
Informatics in Control, Automation and Robotics
;
Intelligent Control Systems and Optimization
;
Mobile Robots and Autonomous Systems
;
Network Robotics
;
Planning and Scheduling
;
Robotics and Automation
;
Simulation and Modeling
;
Symbolic Systems
Abstract:
Planning for and coordinating robots in a multi-robot system (MRS) is crucial for optimizing the performance of the whole MRS. Thus a plan for the movement of the MRS must exist. If some centralized entity calculates the plan, it may result in one plan for the whole group. Such a global plan, which shows how the MRS can reach a goal state, has to be transformed into action guidelines for each robot. This task becomes harder if such a global plan includes dependencies caused by necessary cooperation of the robots. In this paper we present an approach to transform a global multi-robot plan into single-robot actions. We also provide a method to determine how many robots are needed to fulfil the global plan while obeying some constraints. Here we use plans generated by a coordinated navigation planner with spatial constraints, but the method could be expanded to a more general class of plans built from a centralized entity.