Authors: Irving Solis, James Motes, Mike Qin, Marco Morales, Nancy M. Amato

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2312.08554

Venue: IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters
DOI: 10.1109/LRA.2024.3420548
Link to Publication

Abstract:
This work presents Adaptive Robot Coordination (ARC), a novel hybrid framework for multi-robot motion planning (MRMP) that employs local subproblems to resolve inter-robot conflicts. ARC creates subproblems centered around conflicts, and the solutions represent the robot motions required to resolve these conflicts. The use of subproblems enables an innovative, cost-effective hybrid exploration of the multi-robot planning space by dynamically coupling and decoupling necessary subsets of robots only when required and in specific physical locations. This allows ARC to adapt the levels of coordination efficiently by planning in decoupled spaces, where robots can operate independently, and in coupled spaces, where coordination is essential. ARC is probabilistically complete, can be used for any robot, and produces cost-efficient solutions in reduced planning times. Through extensive evaluation across representative scenarios with different robots requiring various levels of coordination, ARC demonstrates its ability to provide simultaneous scalability and precise coordination. ARC is the only method capable of solving all the scenarios and is competitive with coupled, decoupled, and hybrid baselines. 

@article{Solis-arcasa-2024, 
 author = {Solis, Irving and Motes, James and Qin, Mike and Morales, Marco and Amato, Nancy M.}, 
 doi = {10.1109/LRA.2024.3420548}, 
 journal = {IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters}, 
 keywords = {Robots;Robot kinematics;Planning;Space exploration;Probabilistic logic;Mobile robots;Collision avoidance;Path planning for multiple mobile robots or agents;multi-robot systems;motion and path planning}, 
 number = {8}, 
 pages = {7238-7245}, 
 title = {Adaptive Robot Coordination: A Subproblem-Based Approach for Hybrid Multi-Robot Motion Planning}, 
 volume = {9}, 
 year = {2024} 
}