Multi-robot operation system with conflict resolution

Abstract

Applications with large teams of robots are becoming more and more useful. If the scenario is very crowded or very dynamic, conflict resolution when using a shared workspace is a challenging problem. In this paper, an scalable, decentralized and reactive approach for collision avoidance is presented. The robots can navigate in a 2D environment avoiding each other and without high computational requirements. In addition to the conflict resolution algorithm, a multi-robot simulator is presented. The system is flexible and can be used to simulate different algorithms with realistic robots. Finally, an extension of the simulator is proposed in order to operate real robots in a multi-robot testbed. Results of the collision avoidance approach are shown with both real and simulated robots.