Path planning of a group of robots with potential field approach: decentralized architecture

Abstract

This paper deals with the path planning problem of a group of autonomous Wheeled Mobile Robots in a very dynamic workspace. The idea consists of considering the system of group of robots as a robot network with decentralized architecture. Each robot plans its trajectory according to its actual position, the position of the other neighbor robots, the position of the obstacles and the position of its target point. So each robot should interact with the other robots in the network to cooperate together in order to plan each robot trajectory. The path planning for every robot is planned based on the potential field approach. The network reacts with the changes of workspace in real time by updating the system equations associated for each robot. The main objective of this work is to avoid collision between robots and obstacles in order to ensure the safety of robots. The solution is tested and simulated with Matlab/Simulink and Solidworks/Simmechanics.