Multi-robot planning for perception of multiple regions of interest

Abstract

In this paper we address the allocation of perception tasks among a set of multiple robots, for tasks such as inspection, surveillance, or search in structured environments. We consider a set of target regions of interest in a mapped environment that need to be sensed by any of the robots, and the problem is to find paths for the robots that cover all the target regions with minimal cost. We consider not only sensing range when determining paths for the robots to perceive the targets, but also a sensor cost function that can be adapted to each robot’s sensor. Thus the planning has to search for paths with minimal motion and perception cost, instead of the traditional approach where line-of-sight is the only requirement in a motion cost minimization problem. Our contribution is to use planning to determine possible perception positions for every robot, which we cluster and then use as possible waypoints that can be used to construct paths for all the robots. Given the combinatorial characteristics of path determination in this setting, we contribute a construction heuristic to find paths that guarantee full coverage of all the feasible perception target regions, while minimizing the overall cost. We assume robots are heterogeneous regarding their geometric properties, such as size and maximum perception range. We consider simulated scenarios where we show the benefits of our approach, enabling multi-robot path planning for perception of multiple regions of interest.