Locally-optimal multi-robot navigation under delaying disturbances using homotopy constraints
Author(s)
Gregoire, Jean Matthieu Marie; Cap, Michal; Frazzoli, Emilio
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We study the problem of reliable motion coordination strategies for teams of mobile robots when any of the robots can be temporarily stopped by an exogenous disturbance at any time. We assume that an arbitrary multi-robot planner initially provides coordinated trajectories computed without considering such disturbances. We are interested in designing a control strategy that handles delaying disturbance such that collisions and deadlocks are provably avoided, and the travel time is minimized. The problem is analyzed in a coordination space framework, in which each dimension represents the position of a single robot along its planned trajectory. We demonstrate that to avoid deadlocks, the trajectory of the system in the coordination space must be homotopic to the trajectory corresponding to the planned solution. We propose a controller that abides this homotopy constraint while minimizing the travel time. Besides being provably deadlock-free, our experiments show that travel time is significantly smaller with our method than than with a reactive method.
Date issued
2017-12Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics; Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics; Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Urban Studies and Planning; Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Laboratory for Information and Decision SystemsJournal
Autonomous Robots
Publisher
Springer US
Citation
Gregoire, Jean, Michal Čáp, and Emilio Frazzoli. “Locally-Optimal Multi-Robot Navigation Under Delaying Disturbances Using Homotopy Constraints.” Autonomous Robots 42, no. 4 (December 14, 2017): 895–907. doi:10.1007/s10514-017-9673-6.
Version: Author's final manuscript
ISSN
0929-5593
1573-7527