Inter-Robot Interactions in Multi-Robot Systems Using Braids
This addresses coordination challenges in multi-robot systems, such as movement and information exchange, but is incremental as it builds on existing braid group methods for safety.
The paper tackles the problem of multi-robot coordination by characterizing inter-agent interactions using braid groups to enforce safe, collision-free patterns, resulting in a hybrid system that maps symbolic inputs to safe paths for executing classes of interaction patterns.
This paper describes a framework for multi-robot coordination and motion planning with emphasis on inter-agent interactions. We focus on the characterization of inter-agent interactions with sufficient level of abstraction so as to allow for the enforcement of desired interaction patterns in a provably safe (i.e., collision-free) manner, e.g., for achieving rich movement patterns in a shared space, or to exchange sensor information. We propose to specify interaction patterns through elements of the so-called braid group. This allows us to not focus on a particular pattern per se, but rather on the problem of being able to execute a whole class of patterns. The result from such a construction is a hybrid system driven by symbolic inputs that must be mapped onto actual paths that both realize the desired interaction levels and remain safe in the sense that collisions are avoided.