Strategic Coordination and Navigation of Multiple Wheeled Robots

Abstract

Multi-robot navigation and coordination are addressed in this paper. All the robots are subjected to their own kinematic and dynamic constraints. Genetic algorithm tuned fuzzy logic-based motion planner is compared with the potential field-based motion planner. To avoid the conflicts during the navigation, two different coordination schemes, namely strategic and heuristic, are implemented. Results are compared through computer simulation. Simulation experiments were started with eight number of robots initially, and the number of robots has been increased up to 17 later on due to the need of coordination scheme for the maximum number of robots. Strategic coordination scheme along with the genetic fuzzy-based motion planner is found to perform better than the other combinations concerning the quality of solutions and time taken to reach the goal positions. Computational complexity of different methods has also been compared and presented.