Real-Time Co-Ordination of Multiple Robots with Temporal Uncertainty

Abstract

The paper proposes a method to deal with the co-ordination of multiple robots that perform independent tasks in the same workspace. It is assumed that the movements of each robot have been planned independently (geometric paths and velocity profiles) and that there exists temporal uncertainty at some points in each robot path, therefore a robot collision may occur. The proposed method was developed for two robots and it allows the co-ordination of the robots through the on-line modification of the robot velocity profiles according to the evolution of each robot task while the original geometric paths are maintained.