Discrete event modeling of coordinated navigation of multiple mobile robots
Mohd Rokonuzzaman, Rodney D. Hale, Raymond G. Gosine · Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE · 1999
The deployment of mobile robots in some harsh environment applications (e.g. deep mines) has the potential to offer increased safety and higher productivity. These applications often involve multiple cooperating mobile robots. One of the main challenges for the deployment of multiple mobile robots in such applications is to ensure coordination in navigation. It is essential that the mobile robots cooperate to avoid collisions and deadlocks when navigating in the work site. The lack of a mathematical formalism for modeling the coordinated navigation of multiple robots makes it difficult to verify the avoidance of collisions and deadlocks through simulation. This work proposes the use of a Petri net based discrete event formalism to model the coordinated navigation of multiple mobile robots. The detection of collisions and deadlock situations is shown by simulating the discrete event model of the coordinated navigation of multiple mobile robots. The utility of this proposed scheme has been demonstrated by controlling the navigation of three mobile platforms in a 3D graphics environment by the discrete event model of their movements for coordinated navigation in the work site.