Implementation of Collaborative Multi-Robot System Carrying Cargos Autonomously

Abstract

The paper presents implementation of collaborative multi-robot system for carrying cargo autonomously. Multi-robot systems are especially used to carry cargos to target place in the shortest way in the shortest duration by path planning. This system is composed of two robots called as Leader and Assistant. They sense the cargo with load cells on themselves and carry it to the target place. After determination of the cargo, if its weight is in the limits of the weights for Leader, it pushes the cargo by itself and Assistant waits on standby mode. If the cargo is higher than carrying capacity of Leader, Assistant is called and both push it to the target. Detecting cargos task is performed with a method similar to method of calculating fitness value. Carrying cargos task was performed by finding the shortest way with curve fitting algorithm. Carrying cargos with multi-robots by using curve fitting is the most practical solution. Consequently, reducing the route by 13.7% could be provided successfully by this algorithm instead of line following method and so energy saving was ensured. Task performance rate for carrying the cargo to the target place is achieved up to 90% for stand-alone and cooperative operation.