Energy-Constrained Coordination of Multi-Robot Teams

Abstract

This paper discusses the problem of making multiple robots coordinate their movements subject to energy constraints imposed by their available battery levels. This problem is instantiated in the context of energy-aware rendezvous, whereby a collection of mobile robots must decide where and when to meet, with the objective of doing so in the least amount of time, given varying available initial battery levels. As the movements of the individual robots directly affect their energy consumption, the robots must coordinate their movements in such a way that they do not run out of energy prior to the completion of the task. This problem is formulated as a constrained optimization problem, where the constraints themselves result from a lower-level optimal control problem that ensures that all of the robots have nonnegative battery levels when they meet. The energy-constrained coordination problem is solved in a distributed manner and is implemented on a team of differential-drive mobile robots.