Network-Guided Multi-Robot Path Planning for Resource-Constrained Planetary Rovers
Ryan Luna, Alexis Oyama, Kostas E. Bekris · 2010
Planetary exploration can benefit by the presence of multiple robots, which must be able to coordinate their paths and avoid collisions. This work proposes the use of a wireless network for the high-level path planning of multiple planetary rovers. In this setup, robots receive commands from the network nodes so as to maneuver between locations. Thus, robots can focus on tasks such as local obstacle avoidance and localization. This is desirable in space applications where robots are resource-constrained. Towards this objective, this paper presents a distributed path planning algorithm that is executed on the network nodes and provides collision-free paths for the robots on a precomputed roadmap. The method also aims to minimize the occurence of deadlocks and the time it takes for each robot to reach its goal. The approach follows a distributed constraint optimization formulation that lends itself to a decentralized, message-passing solution that is appropri ate for network-guided navigation. Simulations are employed to evaluate the method’s scalability and computational cost, as well as the quality of the resulting paths.