Real-Time Multi-Robot Motion Planning with Safe Dynamics

Abstract

This paper introduces a motion planning system for real-time control of multiple high performance robots in dynamic and unpredictable domains. It consists of a randomized realtime path planner, a bounded acceleration motion control system, and a randomized velocity-space search for collision avoidance of multiple moving robots. The realtime planner ignores dynamics, simplifying planning, while the motion control ignores obstacles, allowing a closed form solution. This allows up to five robots to be controlled 60 times per second, but collisions can arise due to dynamics. Thus a randomized search is performed in the robot’s velocity space to find a safe action which satisfies both obstacle and dynamics constraints. The system has been fully implemented, and empirical results are presented.

This work was supported by United States Department of the Interior under Grant No. NBCH-1040007, and by Rockwell Scientific Co., LLC under subcontract No. B4U528968 and prime contract No. W911W6-04-C-0058 with the US Army. The views and conclusions contained herein are those of the authors, and do not necessarily reflect the position or policy of the sponsoring institutions, and no official endorsement should be inferred.